The Acorn Child

Showered, towelled dry, and dressed, Theo stuffed his crusted bed linen into the washer-dryer under the stairs and turned it on. Waiting for the cycle to finish would mean being late for school, but that was nowhere near as embarrassing as his mother seeing the tell-tale stains.

There was a new boy in Theo’s class that day. He seemed familiar, though Theo was certain he’d never met him before.

Walking home that afternoon, the boy fell quietly into step beside him. They didn’t speak. There was no need to. It felt to Theo as if he and the other boy had been friends all their lives.

At the corner of Theo’s street the boy stopped.

All he said was, “Later.”

Then he turned around and headed back the way they’d just come.

“Wait!” Theo called. “What’s your name?”

“Dion.”

The next morning, Theo woke up with no clear memory of his dreams, but needed to launder his sheets again. That afternoon, he and Dion walked home from school together, just like they had the day before. When they reached the corner, Dion didn’t stop, but kept walking until they reached Theo’s house.

Upstairs in Theo’s bedroom, they undressed without saying anything. Theo couldn’t explain why, but being naked with Dion just felt right. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Dion had more hair from his navel down than Theo might have thought of as normal. But what was normal?

They lay down on Theo’s bed. Their hands and mouths exploring each other.

They slept like that. Locked together. It was late when Theo finally woke to find himself alone.

The next morning, Dion was there at the corner; waiting.

Cradled in a valley between wooded hills, Theo’s village was hundreds of years old. He wasn’t sure how many hundreds, exactly, but the village church dated back to the fourteenth century. The same families had farmed the land for generations, and before the farmers, shepherds had grazed their flocks in summer pastures.

Occupying Romans had built stone bridges over the river to join their hill forts. And nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers had left behind cave paintings of antelope, and auroch, and mammoth. Celebrating a successful hunt, or praying for one.

Nobody laughed at the village drunk when he told them how, as a young man, he’d found the ruins of an ancient temple, its pillars broken and fallen and overgrown with ivy.

For as long as people had lived in the village, they had left offerings in the wood’s sunlit glades jewelled with wildflowers. A fresh baked loaf of bread. A new set cheese in an earthenware pot, infused with lavender, or drizzled generously with honey. A bottle of virgin-pressed olive oil. A flask of wine. The ripest tomatos from their garden. The sweetest apricots from their orchard.

No-one had ever been lost in the woods, not truly lost. The soil on the sloping hills was too thin and full of stones for the olives, pines, and oaks to grow too closely together. Sometimes the very old or very young might become disoriented, but they always came back, and always with the tale of how a beautiful youth had taken them by the hand and led them home.

Ask anyone in the village and they will tell you: The woods are a wild and magical place.

It was into the woods that Dion led Theo. Past swathes of blazing jonquils that bowed their heads, not in mourning for their too fleeting beauty, but in reverence. A god walked among them.

“We’re going to be late for school,” Theo said to Dion’s profile, getting no response. “My mother already thinks I’m some kind of delinquent. Where are you taking me? Don’t say much, do you?”

The sun warmed them. Theo began to sweat. Dion picked a peach from a low hanging branch and gave it to him. The peach blushed at Theo’s touch.

“When the green woods laugh,” sang Theo, “with the voice of joy. And the dimpling stream runs laughing by. When the air does laugh with our merry wit. And the green hill - ”

Dion stopped, regarding Theo quizzically with his head tilted to one side.

“Not a fan? Okay. I’ll shut up.”

It was only then that Theo realized how far into the woods they had come. He looked around for anything familiar. A tree. A rock. A stream. Something. He wasn’t frightened. He could never be, not with Dion. He was simply wondering where they were. A weathered piece of fluted column caught his eye. Then another. Then a block of limestone that was much too regular in its form to be natural.

“Who are you, really?” Asked Theo. “What are you?”

“Your servant,” said Dion.

“I don’t need one. I have a mother for that.”

“Theo Acorn Child.”

“I’m not a child.”

“It is time.”

“Time? Time to go home?”

Theo checked his watch. It was only 11:40.

“It is your time.”

Dion put his hand on Theo’s cheek and gazed deep into his eyes. “Theo.”

“Yes?”

“Acorn Child.”

“Look, we’ve been through this. I - ”

“Theo..... It is time.”

And suddenly Theo knew: Everything.

“I..... I’m not ready.”

“Three times I lay with you,” said Dion. “Three times I scattered my seed on your earth.”

“I think I liked you better when you didn’t talk dirty.”

“In three days you will be ten summers and six.”

“Yes, I know when my birthday is. So?”

“In three days time I will die.”

“What? No! You can’t..... Don’t say that!”

“I will die,” said Dion, “because you will kill me.”

“Uh-uh.” Theo shook his head. “No way!”

“You must.”

“No!”

“Theo.”

“I swear, if you call me Acorn Child one more time - ”

“It is who you are.”

“No, I’m not. I’m Theo Pellier. My father is Georges Pellier. My mother is Mariette Pellier. I won’t do it! I won't! ”

“But the woods. The village.”

“Fuck the woods!” Theo screamed. “And fuck the village! I won’t do it! And you can’t make me!”

Theo ran. He was sure Dion would chase him. But when he looked back, he was still sitting on his haunches in the middle of the clearing, staring at the sky.

There was no wet dream that night. Dion wasn’t waiting at the corner the next morning. And he wasn’t at school. Theo didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep, his head was too full of questions he had no answers for.

When his father picked up the phone after only the third ring, Theo said, “Tell me about the woods.”

Total silence. Then the line went dead.

Three minutes later Theo’s phone rang.

“Hello? Papa?”

All his father said was, “You know.”

“Yes. No. Tell me. You grew up here. You must know something!”

“The Acorn Child.”

“Not you, too!”

“Theo.”

“Why are the woods so special? And what does the village have to do with it? Who’s Dion? Why does he come to my room and - ”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t be you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ve been chosen. It’s your time.”

“You’re not helping!”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why the people in the village leave gifts for - ”

“It’s just some dumb old superstition.”

“I wish it was,” said Theo’s father, “but I think you know better than that.”

Silence.

“Theo?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t explain it over the phone. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk more then.”

“You’re coming here?”

“Yes, of course. But, Theo?”

“Yes?”

“How many times have you ah.....?”

“Tomorrow,” said Theo.

And pressed disconnect.

Theo ran into his father’s arms. “Please, don’t make me do it, Papa!”

His father hugged him tightly.

They stood in front of Theo’s house, crying on each other’s shoulder.

Inside, upstairs in his room, they sat on Theo’s bed.

Georges held his son’s hand.

“Tell me everything.”

“You first,” said Theo.

“Nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine years ago the village was almost wiped out by the Black Death. There was no one to work the fields. The few who’d survived the plague were starving. The village priest knelt in a field at the edge of the woods for two days and two nights, flogging his back and shoulders with an oak branch until they bled, and all the time he prayed for a miracle. On the morning of the third day, at dawn, his prayers were answered. But not by the christian God.”

“A creature came out of the woods. Not much more than a child. Half boy half goat. The priest thought he’d summoned the Devil himself. But he was a practical man, and any kind of help was better than no help at all. A deal was made. The priest offered his immortal soul as payment, but the goat-boy shook his head. A dead man was no use to him, he said. Let the blood that has soaked the earth around you be sacrifice enough.”

“In return the goat-boy - ”

“Dion.”

“Hmm? Yes. Dion. Is that what you call him?”

Theo nodded.

“In return Dion asked that every three-hundred-and-thirty-three years, on the third day of the third month, the village priest - whoever that might be - must choose a handsome youth, someone who wasn’t a child but was not yet a full grown man, to perform the ritual of re-birth.”

“I’m not handsome,” said Theo.

“No,” said his father, “you’re not. You’re so much more than that. You’re the most beautiful boy in the world.”

“You’re my dad,” Theo said, blushing. “You have to say that.”

“It’s true. Even more so because you can’t see it.”

“My nose is too long.”

“It’s perfect.”

“My ears stick out.”

“They’re perfect.”

“My feet smell.”

“Yes, they do.” Georges laughed. “But you’re still perfect.”

“Stop saying that.”

“You’re special,” Theo’s father told him, “because you don’t know how truly special you are.”

“Right,” said Theo. “I’m so special, I have to kill the only person I will ever love.”

“Well, yes..... And no..... Not really.”

“The ritual of re-birth isn’t about death, or dying. It’s about living. Giving new life. New growth. A way of making everything.....good.....again. Not just here in the village. Everywhere. For everyone.”

“So, now I’m supposed to save the world?”

“If anyone can,” said his father, pulling Theo close and hugging him. “You can.”

“I don’t have to get pregnant, do I?”

Georges laughed so hard tears rolled down his face.

Leaving his father sleeping, Theo went to the village church. He hammered on the vestry door.

It opened slowly. Father Benoit regarded Theo with a flicker of uncertainty.

“Why?” Asked Theo. “Why me?”

“Faith.”

“Faith?”

“Faith in you, Theo. Faith in you.”

Dion met him at the edge of the temple clearing, taking both of Theo’s hands in his. “I knew you would come back.”

“Let me guess,” said Theo, “because you had faith in me?”

“You are a good person, Theo Pellier. You have a pure heart.”

“I didn’t think it was my heart you were interested in.”

“Your heart always,” said Dion. “How could my sacrifice truly be a sacrifice if I did not love you?”

Theo sat down in a patch of sweet smelling clover, pulling Dion down with him.

“What’s your name? Your real name.”

“Some call me Satan,” Dion chuckled. “Or Bacchus. The Greeks called me Dionysus. I always liked the Greeks.”

Theo rolled his eyes. “I can’t imagine why.”

Dion actually laughed. “I think you can, Theo..... Acorn Child.”

“What are you?”

Dion shrugged. “I’m me.”

“My father said you were some kind of beast. Part goat.”

“I am,” nodded Dion. “And we both know which part.”

“Tell me about the ritual.”

“You must bleed me.”

“Really? Urgh!”

“Do you see that tall tree?” Dion pointed. “It is the Sacred Oak. It grew from an acorn that broke away from the branch the first priest used to beat himself with. It has stood there for a thousand summers.”

Theo could believe it.

“Tomorrow night the moon will be full,” said Dion. “You must come here, to this grove, alone. And there, under its spreading branches, you will slit my throat.”

“Can’t I just prick you a little bit?”

Dion shook his head. “If I do not die,” he told Theo, “the world cannot be reborn.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“That is a selfish thing to say, Theo Pellier.”

“It’s true.”

“But you will do it, won’t you? You will come?”

“And if I don’t?” Asked Theo. “What’s the worst that could happen? Drought? Floods? Famine? War? Some kind of global pandemic? All those things are happening now!”

“Yes,” said Dion. “But for all the sorrow and evil in the world, there is more good. You are proof of that. Without you all that is right, and just, and light, will vanish. Leaving only darkness.”

Theo hugged his knees to stop the shiver that ran through him. He looked at Dion, but couldn’t hold his lover’s gaze, so he stared, instead, at the Sacred Oak.

Then he said something he’d never told anyone - Ever.

“I don’t like the dark.”

Theo still had questions. So did his father.

Georges drove them to a secluded spot a short distance from the village, where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“You first,” said Theo.

“Tell me about Dion.”

“Everything?”

“As much as you’re comfortable with.”

Theo recounted his strange awakenings. The afternoon he and Dion had had sex. He told him about the temple ruins in the woods, and what Dion had said, and that he’d run away, so scared and sick in the stomach he’d thought he might vomit. The waiting, praying, needing, aching for Dion to come to his room again. The feeling of being more lost and alone than he’d ever felt in his whole life when he hadn’t shown. Going back to the glade. The Sacred Oak. The ritual. The village being more than just a village, but the world, and everyone in it. Promising Dion he’d be there, at the next full moon. The bleeding.

“The rest you know,” he said. “But what did you mean by Dion wouldn’t die? Not really?”

“Do the math,” said Georges. “Why didn’t Dion die six-hundred-and-sixty-six years ago? Maybe that Dion did, and another took his place. Or maybe..... ”

“He was reborn!”

“If a jewish carpenter could do it,” said Georges, “why not a being older than time? A god with a small g is still a god.”

“Do you think he regenerates like Doctor Who?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Theo’s father asked him. “Can you do it? All of it? Right to the end? Even the bleeding?”

“I don’t want to,” said Theo. “I have to.”

“I feel sorry for Father Benoit. All that responsibilty.”

“Twenty years ago,” said Theo’s father. “He was just Luc Descartes. Always had his nose in a book. Smart, like you.”

“The priest?”

“He wasn’t a priest then. He was my best friend. And the only one I ever told.”

“Where is this going?” Asked Theo.

“One morning, a week before my sixteenth birthday, I woke up and my pyjama bottoms were gone. I didn’t remember taking them off. I found them on the floor next to my bed. They were..... Anyway, the same thing happened the next night. I don’t know why Luc wasn’t at school, maybe he was sick, but there was a new boy sitting at his desk. I couldn’t stop staring at him. He looked so..... Our house was at the top of the valley, halfway up a hill. It was a long way to walk, but there was a shortcut, through the woods. He was waiting for me. I’d never..... But with him it felt..... Your mother interrupted us. She wasn’t your mother then. She was the prettiest girl in the village. I’d always loved her, secretly, but I was never brave enough to..... One minute the new boy was there with me..... And then he wasn’t.”

“I never saw him again.”

“Oh, Papa!”

“I guess I failed the test.”

“Do you.....?”

“Regret it? No. How could I? We were married in the village church, your mother and I. Luc flew back from Rome to be my best man. Then you came along. We were happy..... For a while. But I guess I failed at that, too.”

“Not a total failure,” said Theo, kissing the tears from his father’s cheek. “You had me.”

“Yes, we did,” Georges smiled. “The best thing I ever did. Or ever will do. And now you have Dion.”

“Do you think.....? After..... Will he know me? Want to be with me?”

“I hope so. If anyone deserves to be happy, you do. God knows the two of you will have earned it.”

“There is no God,” said Theo. “Only a god with a small ‘g’. And an Acorn Child.”

Father Benoit disagreed with both of them.

“The existence of other deities doesn’t necessarily exclude God,” he told Theo. “He was there before the creation of the universe, and He will still be there when the sun’s light is nothing more than the dying flame of a candle, soon to be extinguished.”

Georges had stopped to visit his old friend on their way back to Theo’s house. They sat in the rectory’s small study, Georges in the only chair, and Theo squatting on a stack of books there was no room for on the already crammed, sagging shelves, while the priest stood at the open window, smoking.

“And you were never chosen, Georges. The timing was wrong. You were..... How do the English say? A bit of crumpet.”

“Eh?”

“I’ve spoken to several men and boys from the village, and they’ve all had similar experiences. Some only the once. Others frequently and regularly over an extended period, depending - it seems - on how ‘agreeable’ they were.”

Theo tried to imagine only having sex every three-hundred-and-thirty-three years. He couldn’t blame Dion for wanting a bit on the side.

“But, isn’t it a sin?” Theo asked Benoit. “I know the Church doesn’t exactly encourage homosexuality.”

The priest ashed his cigarette out the window and shrugged. “We’re all human, Theo. Confession is about forgiveness. Haven’t you ever said sorry for something you might have said or done? And didn’t you feel better afterwards? It’s the same thing.”

The woods were dark. Theo didn’t like the dark. He stood at the edge of the trees and waited for the promised full moon to reappear from behind a cloud. It was the ides of march, spring, but the night air still gnawed at him with the teeth of winter.

It was all planned. Theo’s father would take Theo’s mother out to dinner, to reminisce, and keep her out for as long as he could. Father Benoit would hear Theo’s confession, bless him, and walk with him as far as the Archambaults’ peach orchard, where he would later return to wait for him. Dion was going to meet Theo at the old stone bridge, and from there they would go to the temple glade together. It had all sounded so simple.

Only, now, it wasn’t. Theo was alone. And he was scared. “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,” he sang to himself, “don’t be a - ”

“Theo?”

“Dion?”

“Yes. Come.”

“Where are your clothes? Aren’t you cold? And why don’t you look more like a faun? You are a faun, aren’t you? Why don’t you have a goat’s legs? And hooves? Or a tail? Mister Tumnas had a tail.”

“I appeared to you first in a form you would find more acceptable. More pleasing. Would you like me better if I had a tail?”

“It might be cute,” said Theo. “And uhm..... you know.”

Then, as if it had been there all along, and Theo had simply not noticed it before, Dion had a tail that he twitched from side to side alluringly.

A large bonfire was burning in the clearing. Dion handed Theo a horn of mulled wine.

“Drink.”

“What is it?”

“Drink.”

Theo sniffed. “It smells funny.” He sipped at it. “Urk! What are the green bits?”

“Herbs,” said Dion. “They will give you strength. And courage.”

Thinking he’d need all the help he could get, Theo closed his eyes, held his nose, and emptied the horn in one long swallow.

A loose sheaf of clean wheat-straw had been spread out on the temple ruins’ mosaic floor, and on it was piled every kind of produce the village was famous for, fruits and vegetables, breads and cheeses, oil and wine.

“Eat,” said Dion.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat.”

Theo picked at a bunch of grapes.

“Strip.”

“It’s cold.”

“Theo!”

“Okay! Okay! I’m doing it. See?”

“Kiss me.”

Theo didn’t argue.

“I just thought of something,” said Theo. “I didn’t bring a knife with me.”

“You do not need one.”

“But, how am I.....?”

“With this,” said Dion, reaching behind the stump of a broken pillar and holding out a shard of polished, black flint. Not just flaked to form a wickedly sharp edge, Theo saw, but fitted with a wooden grip or hilt that had been carved into some kind of.....

“What is it? A horn of plenty?”

Dion shook his head. “Turn it over.”

Theo did. There was a scene of the crucifixion on the reverse side of the haft. Only, instead of a cross, Jesus was nailed to an oak tree. He could tell it was an oak tree because the crown of thorns had been changed to a wreath of leaves and acorns.

“Did you make this?” He asked Dion. “It’s beautiful.”

They made love under the silver-frosted, new-budding branches of the Sacred Oak.

Theo would have sworn he’d caught the gone just as quickly flicker of a burning torch out of the corner of his eye. There it was again, but closer now, and another, and then a third. More. A dozen. Twice that number. A ring of orange light. Surrounding the glade. Encircling them. Drawing ever nearer.

“Somebody’s here.”

“Do you have the blade?”

“Yes.”

“Do it.”

The honed edge of the flint knife, clenched white-knuckled in his fist, sliced cleanly through skin and muscle, tendon and artery.

Blood gushed.

Dion choked.

Coughed.

Spat.

Collapsed.

Theo gagged. His throat was full of hot, scalding vomit. He forced it back.

It was done.

Dion lay sprawled, dead.

In the spreading crimson.

The white-blossomed clover.

The dispassionate, defiled, derelict moonlight.

Strong hands clamped around Theo’s right arm. Bren Archambault. A scowling, grizzled bear of a man. His son, Mattias, had hold of Theo’s left. They hauled him to his feet and half carried half dragged him to the trunk of the Sacred Oak. Suddenly, Theo was weightless, hoisted over Bren’s shoulder as easily as a sack of grain. Then up, with a jerking motion, and up again, and Theo saw the wooden rails of a ladder sinking into the loose soil under their weight as Bren climbed higher.

Theo’s back slammed against the trunk.

A voice: “Gently!”

Archambault’s left hand pinned Theo’s wrists together, lifted his arms over his head, held them there, bone grinding against bone. The man grumbled something unintelligible around what was clenched between his nicotine stained teeth.

What were those? Were they..... Nails?

A hammer in Bren’s right hand.

A nail spat into the fumbling fingers of his left..

Theo rag-doll. Helpless.

The hammer swung.

Theo screamed.

Distressed rungs creaked as Archambault descended.

His spittle splashed Theo’s right foot.

His left hand gripped Theo’s ankles.

Another nail.

Another swing of the hammer.

Archambault’s rasp, like gravel sliding out of the rusted bed of a truck, calling to the men and older boys from the village who’d gathered around him. “See the Acorn Child! See how he takes upon himself all the weight of the world’s suffering!”

A new face. Mattias had climbed the ladder. Tears streaked his sunburned cheeks. He placed a wreath of woven oak branches on Theo’s brow.

“Be brave, Theo. It will be over soon.”

Day.

Night.

Day.

Night.

Morning. Three women from the village entered the glade, followed by Father Benoit and Georges Pellier, carrying a ladder between them. The two men worked silently at prising the nails free. Theo was beyond pain. They lowered him carefully, step by step, to the ground, where his mother, Mariette, wrapped him in a shroud of linen.