Where Hinzelmann had been standing stood a male child, no more than five years old. His hair was dark brown, and long. He was perfectly naked, save for a worn leather band around his neck. He was pierced with two swords, one of them going through his chest, the other entering at his shoulder, with the point coming out beneath the rib-cage. Blood flowed through the wounds without stopping and ran down the child’s body to pool and puddle on the floor. The swords looked unimaginably old.
The little boy stared up at Shadow with eyes that held only pain.
And Shadow thought to himself, of course. That’s as good a way as any other of making a tribal god. He did not have to be told. He knew.
You take a baby and you bring it up in the darkness, letting it see no one, touch no one, and you feed it well as the years pass, feed it better than any of the village’s other children, and then, five winters on, when the night is at its longest, you drag the terrified child out of its hut and into the circle of bonfires, and you pierce it with blades of iron and of bronze. Then you smoke the small body over charcoal fires until it is properly dried, and you wrap it in furs and carry it with you from encampment to encampment, deep in the Black Forest, sacrificing animals and children to it, making it the luck of the tribe. When, eventually, the thing falls apart from age, you place its fragile bones in a box, and you worship the box; until one day the bones are scattered and forgotten, and the tribes who worshipped the child-god of the box are long gone; and the child-god, the luck of the village, will be barely remembered, save as a ghost or a brownie: a kobold.
Shadow wondered which of the people who had come to northern Wisconsin 150 years ago, a woodcutter, perhaps, or a mapmaker, had crossed the Atlantic with Hinzelmann living in his head.
And then the bloody child was gone, and the blood, and there was only an old man with a fluff of white hair and a goblin smile, his sweater-sleeves still soaked from putting Shadow into the bath that had saved his life.
The luck of the tribe: black pine pitch and gouts of blood, darkness and bonfires that cast long shadows.
Lauren –
Wet, it smells like I had melted rich chocolate onto my skin, and as it dries it immediately shifts into being leather-heavy with a hint of patchouli and the cocoa in the very background. It smells amazing (my mom described it as a scent you would wear when you wanna get laid) but unfortunately doesn’t last on my skin, fading within a couple hours, and while it lasts it has no “throw” – you’d have to put your nose right against skin that it has been applied to and even then, it’s faint. Very pleasant and I do intend to keep trying it in different weather settings as I think more body heat will help the scent. Right now it’s rather cold in my area.
Gloame –
Mm chocolate. Seems almost to have a bit of cedar in there, but maybe that’s the flowers mixing with the leather. The incense is low, but I’m getting just a ping of bubblegum like I do with some incensey blends (can’t figure out what type of incense, unfortunately). All in all, it’s a pleasing scent, but not a bottle for me.
Where I’d wear this: Chocolate and camping
Kourtney –
It’s goooood. The cocoa/chocolate burns off quickly, and it just leaves an earthy richness – I had to come back and read the notes (I’d ordered an imp). I couldn’t pick out the exact notes but it smells good on me.
Kourtney –
It’s goooood. The cocoa/chocolate burns off quickly, and it just leaves an earthy richness – I had to come back and read the notes (I’d ordered an imp). I couldn’t pick out the exact notes but it smells good on me. Earthy and dark.
VetchVespers –
Deep, dark, warm cocoa with a dusty, herbal bite. Tezcatlipoca has a richness to it that reminds me of good coffee beans or tobacco, that sort of earthy bite. It’s not sweet or foodie. It stays fairly close to the skin on me and last for a long time. I think it could be worn by either sex. One of my favorites.
KatRampant –
Really nice chocolate note in the bottle – super deep and rich. On the dry down some resinous notes emerge, something musky, and then a hint of marigold and leather. This is a seriously complex blend on me. The dry ends up in a really different place than the wet. The cocoa is much less detectable, but it remains earthy and dark and really delightful.