In my village around autumn-time the men shave their beards. A year’s worth of growth, long wispy strands, bristled ginger wires, even the few strays on the youngest lad’s chin, are all sheared off, and collected in woven baskets. Their wives and the little ones take these collections along the lane to be tossed upon the bushes. They hang there, like angel’s hair, and the countrymen are all bare-cheeked for the winter. They tuck their chins in their collars, and head out, nevertheless; far before the dawn when the sky is still strewn with icy stars. The ground freezes, and the trails are auburn mosaics of fallen leaves. Within a week, the snowy petals of the bushes begin to erupt into soft fronds, and the path to the village is strewn with white streamers, of flowers and of what few strands of hair have not been taken for the birds’ winter nests. For any returning traveller, bringing goods from afar for winter, their way is lit by moon-grey tufts that guide them on their way back home.
Long ago, there lived a man in my village with a long white beard. He worked with wood during the day, and came home every night to his beautiful wife and their two chubby toddlers to sit by the fire. His wife loved dearly to plait his long beard. They lived a happy life, and despite his perpetual shyness, smile always hidden in the fluff on his chin, he was well-liked in the village.
One day, the first day of the cold, when frost lay in a blanket and tipped the grass with white, his wife, pregnant with their third, slipped on a pebble hauling washing down to the river, and split her head clean in two upon the rocks. The water coursed down its route, nevertheless, polishing the rock clean of her thought and washing the pink stuff that remained downstream. The man with his beard was inconsolable, and that very night, he kissed his two children on the forehead as they slept, cut off his long white beard with one sharp cut of a kitchen knife, went into the woods, and was never seen again. All he left behind was a trail of white wispy hairs from the village into the deep dark forest.
It has been many years since, and his sons now turn the wood and live in the thatched cottage where they sat on their mother’s lap by the fire. They have their own children, now, and although they are too small to know the significance, they sit cross-legged and patient as the men are shorn on those yearly autumn afternoons, and lead the procession out of the town to the woodland. The sons miss their father, however little they might remember of him, and instead they recall a feeling of warmth, of safety, and not much else. They mourn heavily their own children, who do not know what to miss; for to miss someone who was never there is to hear a woodland without birdsong, to sense in their little house only the faintest trace of smoke, as if the fire was never burning.
And so, they continue with their tradition as the sons’ beards turn from dusted blonde to white, and they look past the fields with its tilling farmers to the woods, and wonder of the fate of their father. Many travellers have passed through, as it is the route into neighbouring towns, but the forest betrays no secrets. Once, a trader from afar recounted how he passed through at dusk, fearful, for the woodland is a place to be passed through and not to remain. And so he campaigned end to end, racing the setting sun, and in his haste stumbled over a tree root, slicing open his knee. A twig snapped, and heart pumping, blood leaking black oil on the forest floor, he turned to see a magnificent white owl perched atop a branch looking down. Never in all his years, he told the people, had he ever seen such a creature. Feathers that seemed to glow, and eyes shining bright-black in the darkening evening, the owl looked on at this traveller without fear or fury, just the simple watching-on of a creature who has never been taught the ways of men. The traveller did not wish to be such a teacher, and so got on his way, and when he glanced back the owl was gone.
It was harvest-day in the village, and every man and his wife, babies slung over shoulders or in baskets nearby, were working away in the fields. The day was cool, and the scythes sliced easily, and the harvest was good. The forest lay on the horizon, and the village worked together in harmony, in the quiet peace of a people who know little else. But this gentle afternoon was interrupted by the shout of one man, for making his way across the fields was a small, sharp figure.
The villagers gathered around as the old man approached. The winter of his life had long begun, and his beard lay down right to his navel. His eyes were pinched shut, long accustomed to the darkness of the woods but now confronted with the orange rays of autumn afternoon sun. His clothes lay worn and tattered upon his skin, stretched over bones, with not an ounce of fat. For an old man, his years of rabbit-catching and mushroom-foraging in the forest had made him lithe, and he moved silently and with intention. The village eyed him cautiously, for many of them could not believe the old man in the woods was not just a story, a tale from a generation’s past. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravel, and he said:
Many years have passed since I lost my wife that day down by the river. The water that rushes now is no longer the same that passed then. I am sure that you still go down to wash your clothes there; I hope you tread carefully. The woods have treated me well. I have eaten most days, and the days that I have not, there is a fresh stream to drink from. I am old, however, and no longer wish to pass my remaining days living as the animals do. Cut my beard, and let us lay the strands upon the bushes. I wish to see my grandchildren, who know me only through tales told, and have not sat upon my knee as grandchildren should do. Please forgive my absence, but the village without my dearest was as empty as the winter fields. The forest provided me an infinite home.
And the country people took him in, the sons giving him each a gentle kiss on his grizzled cheek, and set off along the path to the village. The hedges, turned all shades of orange and yellow, basked in the fading sunlight, and the delicate white flowers seemed to hold their breath, waiting for the moment to explode and sprout a thousand tendrils, and welcome the returning villager, who is led with a son on either side back to the village and his home.