Related products

• 

  Nerves and Sinew, Wood and Clay Hair Gloss

  Taut red strings of daemonorops draco and licorice root tugging on carved oak streaked with vetiver and clove with bright nerve-sparks of frankincense and elemi.

  Add to cart
• 

  The King’s Daughter Perfume Oil

  There were a prince and a princess sitting by a stream in a wooded valley. Their seven servants had set up a scarlet canopy beneath a tree, and the royal young couple ate a box lunch to the accompaniment of lutes and theorbos. They hardly spoke a word to one another until they had finished the meal, and then the princess sighed and said, “Well, I suppose I’d best get the silly business over with.” The prince began to read a magazine.

  “You might at least –” said the princess, but the prince kept on reading. The princess made a sign to two of the servants, who began to play an older music on their lutes. Then she took a few steps on the grass, held up a bridle bright as butter, and called, “Here, unicorn, here! Here, my pretty, here to me! Comecomecomecomecome!”

  The prince snickered. “It’s not your chickens you’re calling, you know,” he remarked without looking up. “Why don’t you sing something, instead of clucking like that?”

  “Well, I’m doing the best I can,” the princess cried. “I’ve never called one of these things before.” But after a little silence, she began to sing.

  I am a king’s daughter,
  And if I cared to care,
  The moon that has no mistress
  Would flutter in my hair.
  No one dares to cherish
  What I choose to crave.
  Never have I hungered,
  That I did not have.

  I am a king’s daughter,
  And I grow old within
  The prison of my person,
  The shackles of my skin.
  And I would run away
  And beg from door to door,
  Just to see your shadow
  Once, and never more.

  So she sang, and sang again, and then she called, “Nice unicorn, pretty, pretty, pretty,” for a little longer, and then she said angrily, “Well, I’ve done as much as I’ll do. I’m going home.”

  The prince yawned and folded his magazine. “You satisfied custom well enough,” he told her, “and no one expected more than that. It was just a formality. Now we can be married.”

  “Yes,” the princess said, “now we can be married.” The servants began to pack everything away again, while the two with the lutes played joyous wedding music. The princess’s voice was a little sad and defiant as she said, “If there really were such things as unicorns, one would have come to me. I called as sweetly as anyone could, and I had the golden bridle. And of course I am pure and untouched.”

  “For all of me, you are,” the prince answered indifferently. “As I say, you satisfy custom. You don’t satisfy my father, but then neither do I. That would take a unicorn.” He was tall, and his face was as soft and pleasant as a marshmallow.

  When they and their retinue were gone, the unicorn came out of the wood, followed by Molly and the magician, and took up her journey again. A long time later, wandering in another country where there were no streams and nothing green, Molly asked her why she had not gone to the princess’s song. Schmendrick drew near to listen to the answer, though he stayed on his side of the unicorn. He never walked on Molly’s side.

  The unicorn said, “That king’s daughter would never have run away to see my shadow. If I had shown myself, and she had known me, she would have been more frightened than if she had seen a dragon, for no one makes promises to a dragon. I remember that once it never mattered to me whether or not princesses meant what they sang. I went to them all and laid my head in their laps, and a few of them rode on my back, though most were afraid. But I have no time for them now, princesses or kitchenmaids. I have no time.”

  A matter of formality: lilac musk, sandalwood, sweet pea, watermelon accord, pale woods, elemi, and oakmoss.

  Add to cart
• 

  Haunted Housewife Perfume Oil

  “When mothers try to live the way our culture encourages us to, as almost literally selfless vehicles for others’ fulfillment, we become something else, something cold and hungry, something you wouldn’t want to see standing over your bed in the dark.”

  A thin, sorrowful, lonely scent: white musk and dust, elemi and white amber, carrot seed and opium tar accord.

  Add to cart
• 

  Bess Perfume Oil

  I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
  I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
  I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
  I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
  I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
  Since from myself another self I turned.
  My care is like my shadow in the sun,
  Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
  Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
  His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
  No means I find to rid him from my breast,
  Till by the end of things it be supprest.
  Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
  For I am soft and made of melting snow;
  Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
  Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
  Or let me live with some more sweet content,
  Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

  Inspired by the tragic, ill-fated love of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester. This is our modernization of a 17th-century perfume blend favored by British aristocracy: rosemary, orange flower, grape spirit, five rose variants, lemon peel, and mint.

  Select Options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page