Hinzelmann

[patina]

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.

In the vial this is a Big Woods smell, smoky and mysterious. On it becomes more simple: pine and smoke. I keep thinking I smell juniper too. The pine isn't super sharp but it's undoubtedly pine. I don't get blood, or maybe that's what makes me think there's juniper here. I'm reminded that pine resin and juniper were both used for mummification.

Both pine and smoke are well balanced but I wish the scent was a little more complicated.

Layering this with a chocolate scent is very good, by the way.

[zankoku_zen]

Smoky pine, touch of dragon blood and juniper. It's definitely smoky and somewhat ashy. Masculine pine blend. Good throw and wear length.

[Blood onmy hands]

The pine in this reminds me strongly of Dublin, because it has a misty sweetness to it rather than a sour tone. Kind of like those pine tree shaped car fresheners.

 

The smoke is much less than I thought it would be, thankfully, as I don't enjoy overwhelmingly smoky blends. This smells like it has black musk and incense smoke in it, not really outright woodsmoke or bonfire. I don't get blood musk or dragon's blood at all.

 

Dries down to what smells like black musk (slightly powdery, dark, incensey, masculine, slightly black leathery, musky) and sweet opoponax on me with whiffs of sweet, smoldering incense cones. Only a hint of sweet pine in the drydown, but it's there and gives some life and lift to the blend.

 

"Pitch" usually equals woodsmoke, but this is all sweet incense smokiness. Masculine. Pine-y, but sweet. Mostly warm, but with a touch of coolness from the pine.

I'd love this one on a man.