The Golden Acorns - Part II
(Continued from Thursday, August 5)
The children screamed, and they started to scramble back down the staircase; but the owl darted in front of them, blocking their path. Azar and Arani clung to one another, weeping, and begged the owl not to hurt them, for they had meant no harm themselves.
The owl spoke. "Children," it said, its voice as lonely and haunting as a chill winter night, "I mean you no harm. Indeed, I wish only happiness and prosperity upon you, and it is I who have provided you with this feast you see before you. You may come as often as you wish and take as much as you like."
But Azar was not to be reassured so easily. "We hear that there is an ogre in the heart of these woods," he replied. "An ogre who may take any form he desires and who feasts upon human children."
Glittering tears filled the eyes of the owl, eyes like liquid topaz. It brushed them away with its wings and sighed, "I'm afraid, children, that it is humans who kill the forest, not the forest who kills man."
Azar felt chastened at this and said no more.
Then Arani spoke up. "Great and generous Owl," said she, "what would you have us do in return? We accept your gifts with gratitude but feel that we would like to repay you in some way. We're poor, it is true, but young and strong, and not afraid to work."
The owl blinked. Filmy membranes briefly and eerily muted the glowing amber of his eyes. He turned and gestured towards two squat, bulging bags that rested on the floor. "Inside these bags," he said, "you will find acorns of the purest gold. Tell no one about them. Pay attention to your dreams. They will tell you where to plant them. They will tell you where to plant these acorns, a few at a time. If you do well, you will ensure your own prosperity, that of your entire village, and the forest as well."
Awed, and just a little disbelieving, the twins crept over to the bags, unloosed the tops, and peeked inside. The buttery gold of the acorns caught the sunlight and flashed tantalizingly, causing the children to gasp at their beauty. "But—what if we fail?" trembled Azar, who had never remembered a dream in his life and was not sure he could start now.
The owl didn't reply for a moment. "If you fail," he said finally, "then we all die. The village, the forest—even the heart of the forest."
With this, the owl took flight through an open window, creating a great rush of wind as he beat his wings. The children ran to the window and watched him glide away through the shaggy branches of the forest, branches padded with emerald cushions of moss and spears of fern, where insects sang and tree frogs made their homes. They watched until only a glint of him shone through the forest in the luminous, dappled sunlight, until he finally disappeared into the dusky gloom.
After the owl was gone, both children fell upon the banquet table and ate to their hearts' content, sorry that they could not share their good fortune with their mother. When they had feasted until they could eat no more, they bent to gather up the bags of gilded acorns.
Surprisingly, they found that the bags weighed no more than if they had been filled with feathers, unusual for a bag full of real acorns, let alone those of pure, dense gold. Once or twice Azar and Arani stopped and checked the contents of the bag, thinking perhaps that magic had turned them into leaves once they had left the enchanted sphere of the tree house. But each and every time they looked, bright, burnished gold winked at them from the folds of the bags. And when they held a single acorn, it would suddenly grow heavy, lying like a lump of shot in their hands.
Upon returning home, they promptly dug a hole for the bags in the ruin of their garden and then covered the freshly turned earth with a smooth slab of stone. They said nothing of their adventure to their mother when she came in from work, tired and dispirited, worn down like the machinery she operated day after day. Azar and Arani prepared as nice a dinner for her as they could from their sparse stores and urged her to take the biggest and choicest portions while striving not to give their afternoon's activities away.
That night, Arani and Azar both dreamed clearly and vividly. They dreamed that they floated phantomlike through the still, quiet streets of the village. Every so often, they would glimpse a tiny seedling gleaming in the yard of a dwelling or building, glowing a pale ethereal green, as though fashioned from fairy fire. From this sign, they knew that they must plant one of the golden acorns right on that very spot.
They awoke well before dawn. They awoke before the first cock had crowed, before any stray fingers of dawn had brightened the sky, before their mother arose to light the fire and begin her long and joyless day. Even so, they decided to separate in order to make the work go more quickly.
Arani had no trouble finding her locations. She buried the acorns without a qualm, savoring their beauty briefly before letting go, smoothing and patting the covering soil into place with care. When she had planted all the acorns she had brought, she headed back to the house to wait for Azar. She didn't have long to wait. Azar came back soon after she did, though he crawled immediately into bed without a word.
What Azar had done, and what he didn't have the courage to tell his sister, was this: He couldn't bring himself to bury the acorns. They looked so exquisitely beautiful and shiny, he couldn't bear to throw them into the dirt and cover them up. Besides, if they really were pure gold—they certainly seemed to be as he hefted them in his hand—he reasoned that they must be very valuable.
It pained him terribly to watch his mother grow old and haggard before his very eyes. He wanted Arani to be able to wear pretty gowns instead of the meticulously patched and re-patched rags they both possessed as their only clothes. He wanted the little table in their cottage to resemble the scrumptious, bountiful one in the tree house. He thought that if he held on to his acorns, he might be able to sell them to a rich man for a great deal of money.
As for the owl's dire warning, Azar shoved it uneasily aside. Surely the entire village wouldn't die if he neglected to plant his acorns—particularly if Arani distributed hers, as he felt sure she would do.
So, night after night, when they separated to make their rounds, Arani planted her acorns, while Azar secretly hoarded his. The twins continued to visit the tree house whenever they became hungry, but the amount of food dwindled each time they went. The owl never reappeared.
One morning, when Arani proposed a trip to the giant tree, Azar begged off. He didn't feel well, he said, and wanted to stay home. Arani sensed something amiss with her brother. In fact, he had seemed queerly distant ever since the first night they went into the village to plant the golden acorns. But since he would not confide in her, she let him be, trusting that whatever it was, he would surely let it surface someday.
As soon as Arani's slim figure disappeared into the forest, Azar scurried to unearth his secret cache of acorns. He peeked into the bag where, as always, the acorns beamed up at him reassuringly, then he grabbed them up and trotted into town, towards the wealthy section. Oddly enough, the bag weighed more than it ever had before, but that just convinced Azar that they must be truly gold. As he went, he gazed enviously at the prosperous, spacious homes that stood proudly and in good repair. He told himself that soon he and his family would occupy such a dwelling—as in fact, even the poorest villagers had lived in, once upon a time.
When he found himself in the wealthy neighborhoods, his envy gave way to wonder, for he had never in his life seen or even imagined such opulence. The houses were huge, every one of them, and built from the finest woods available. Some of them even had polished copper roofs that flashed in the sun.
Upon reaching the end of the street, Azar beheld the richest, grandest house of all. It was an enormous mansion constructed from sheets of alabaster and rose-colored marble, whose eaves twinkled and shimmered with mock icicles fashioned from crystals of ice-clear quartz. Giant logs, some of them almost the size of the enchanted tree, served as the beams and columns of the house, logs from trees that had lived a thousand years or more.
Azar almost lost his resolve when he entered the elegant ground dotted with goldfish ponds and tiny bridges. But a gardener spotted Azar and roughly collared him, demanding that Azar tell him just what he thought he was doing sneaking about the place.
"I have something to show the master of the house!" Azar cried, knees knocking together.
"Oh, really?" sneered the gardener. "And what might an urchin such as you have to show the master of this house?"
With shaking hands Azar unloosed the cord from the neck of the bag. A handful of golden acorns tumbled onto the ground.
At this, the gardener's eyes narrowed and he snatched the bag from Azar.
"Tell you what, boy," he said. "I'll go show these to the master. You wait here."
So Azar waited. And waited. When a full hour had passed and still the gardener hadn't come back, Azar went up to the door and pulled the bell. The man who answered it took one look at Azar, picked him up, and threw him into the street, locking the gate behind him.
"Don't ever come back, you beggar, if you know what's good for you!" he bawled after him.
Thoroughly humiliated and disappointed, Azar bolted for home, crying all the way. He found Arani there, waiting for him. She, too, was weeping.
"The food is all gone!" she sobbed. "And the owl is dying!"
Azar stood stock still, his cheeks flaming with shame. "It's all my fault!" he exclaimed, gesturing wildly in fury and despair. He threw himself to the ground and beat the earthen floor with his fists. Between fits of sobbing, he told his sister what he had done.
"I meant only good!" he protested tearfully, once his story was spent and Arani had gathered him into her arms to comfort him. "I just wanted Mother to be free from working so hard—I wanted you to wear pretty clothes like the other girls! I thought if you planted your half, everything would turn out—maybe not as well but at least half as well!"
Arani sighed and stroked her brother's dark hair, hair as dark as night. "I think it must be all or none, then," she said. "We have to get the acorns back and plant them."
"Arani, you don't understand," Azar replied. "The most powerful man in the village took them away from me. He has guards! How can we even hope to retrieve them?"
"I don't know yet," said she. "But I do know that if we ask our dreams, they'll give us the answer we seek.”
Filled with mortification, Azar could not imagine a solution presenting itself. He racked his brains all day without success. But that night, when the twins slept, they shared the very same, very remarkable dream.
They dreamed that they journeyed across a vast desert, a silent, still, lifeless desert, salt crystals lying like splinters all over the ground. Nothing grew in this desert, not a twisted stump nor a scrub brush. No animals scampered, not a beetle scuttled, and nary a bird flittered through the sky. They traveled for the better part of the day, trudging without ceasing till even their dreaming selves grew thirsty. Amazingly, though they had not even seen a puddle the entire time they had traversed the desert, the minute they voiced their desire for water, they came upon a flowing spring. Luxuriant mosses crowded the banks of the pools it formed, verdant water fern trembled on the water's surface. Eagerly the twins fell to their knees and drank, finding that the cold, sweet water caused new energy to course through their veins.
Weary from the relentless sun, they then asked for shade, and immediately they sighted a forest over the next rise. Once in the forest, they asked for food to sustain them, and they came upon a meadow crammed with raspberry bushes, where choice morel mushrooms peeked out from between fallen leaves, and crisp, green miner's lettuce sparkled temptingly. The children nibbled and frolicked in great joy.
Little by little it dawned upon the twins that this magical forest felt very familiar. In fact, it seemed to be none other than their own beloved forest. Azar decided to address the woods themselves.
"Great forest," said he, tears gathering in his eyes as he spoke, "I beg your forgiveness. I have failed you. But I want to make it right! If you can give me more acorns to plant, I promise you, I'll plant every single one of them without delay. Please give me another chance. Please, don't let the owl die."
At that the forest grew quiet. Then the twins heard a loud crackling and crunching through the underbrush. Eyes wide, they drew together for courage as they waited to see what manner of creature might appear. But it was a man who came to stand at the edge of the clearing, the very man who had robbed Azar of his acorns. He looked even bigger and more menacing in the dream than he did in the day. Swinging round the sack he carried slung over his shoulder, he thrust it at Azar. "Take them for all I care! They're worthless," he spat. "Nothing but a bag of useless acorns. The devil take your trickery!"
And then, the most remarkable thing of all happened. The man's eyes transformed into twin suns, and golden feathers began to sprout from every part of his body. His arms turned into gigantic wings, his feet into powerful talons. When he rose up to fly away, he looked down at them, scorching them with his gaze. So great was the searing heat, it awoke the twins in their beds. They felt for one another's hands in the dark, then arose and crept out to the garden. They hoped that perhaps the acorns had been magically delivered in the enchanted predawn hours, but alas, no sign of the golden acorns surfaced. They dug in their former hiding place, Azar checked his secret spot, but there was not an acorn to be found … .
Monday, August 9, 2010