Beaver Moon, Yules, and One Lonely Unicorn...

[wickedgoddess]

Beaver Moon, the Yules, and the first series of the Last Unicorn scents are live at BPAL!

 

BEAVER MOON 2010

Here we go with the double entendres again! Strawberry and peach cheesecake, heavy on the sticky glaze.

 

Artwork by Julie Dillon.

 

The Beaver Moon perfume and tee will be live until Monday, October 25, 2010.

 

++THE NUTCRACKER

KLARA

Honey dusting powder, mandarin, iris, ylang ylang, tea rose, and carnation.

 

HERR DROSSELMEYER 2010

Magus, toymaker, and Godfather to Klara. An enigmatic man, seemingly somewhat sinister, but bearing a gentle air and a sincere love for children. This scent is dignified, refined, but dark, and hints towards esoteric mysteries and the secrets that tie mechanics to magick. Pipe smoke, sweet leather, woods and linen.

 

+ Brought to life by the Master Toymaker, they dance:

HARLEQUIN AND COLUMBINE

French vanilla, red currant, sage, balsam, rosewood, mandarin, lemon peel, pomegranate, and cedar.

 

THE SOLDIER

Red musk, vanilla cream, black tea, black pepper, leather, and pie.

 

GROßVATER TANZ

The evening’s celebration winds down with a traditional German folk song: rice porridge, candied fruits, heavy cream, powdered clove, and Lebkuchen.

 

THE NUTCRACKER

Klara’s most prized Christmas gift. Broken by Fritz in a fit of jealousy, repaired by Drosselmeyer’s magic: frankincense, black mission fig, and galbanum.

 

THE CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT

The moment of passage between the waking world and the swirling mist of dreams: black currant, frankincense, blue musk, mugwort, and wisteria.

 

THE RAT KING 2010

The Nine-Headed nemesis of the Nutcracker Prince. Dust, wood and feral musk with a fang-sharp undertone.

 

THE WALTZ OF THE SNOWFLAKES

The Snow Queen and Snow King greet Klara and the Nutcracker Prince as they journey through the Enchanted Forest: vanilla-laced snow, graceful and sweet, with fir needle and black pine bark.

 

++A CHRISTMAS CAROL

EBENEZER SCROOGE

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”

 

A dry, dusty, soulless scent, flinty with greed, sour with ill-temper: neglected leather, oakmoss, tonka bean, black pepper, cumin, and vetiver.

 

CHRISTMAS EVE IN THE COUNTING HOUSE

It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

 

Creaky wood, thick fog, and dying embers.

 

A WORLD OF FOOLS

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

 

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!”

 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

 

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

 

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

 

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!” again; and followed it up with “Humbug.”

 

“Don’t be cross, uncle!” said the nephew.

 

“What else can I be,” returned the uncle, “when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”

 

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew.

 

“Nephew!” returned the uncle, sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

 

Figgy pudding with a stake of holly through its heart.

 

MARLEY'S GHOST

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

 

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

 

“Much!”—Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

 

“Who are you?”

 

“Ask me who I was.”

 

“Who were you then?” said Scrooge, raising his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” He was going to say “to a shade,” but substituted this, as more appropriate.

 

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

 

“Can you—can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

 

“I can.”

 

“Do it, then.”

 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

 

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

 

“I don’t,” said Scrooge.

 

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

 

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

 

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

 

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

 

“You see this toothpick?” said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.

 

“I do,” replied the Ghost.

 

“You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge.

 

“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwithstanding.”

 

“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”

 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

 

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

 

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

 

“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

 

Chains of avarice binding an unquiet spirit: grave-cold phantasmal iron links.

 

INCESSANT TORTURE OF REMORSE

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”

 

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

 

Scrooge trembled more and more.

 

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

 

“Jacob,” he said, imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!”

 

“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. “It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark me!—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!”

 

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.

 

“You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,” Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

 

“Slow!” the Ghost repeated.

 

“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And travelling all the time!”

 

“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.”

 

“You travel fast?” said Scrooge.

 

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost.

 

“You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge.

 

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

 

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”

 

Life’s opportunity misused: opopponax, lavender, blackberry, patchouli, olive leaf, myrtle, and white cognac.

 

THE CHAINED PHANTOMS

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

 

Purgatorial wretchedness and despair: ice-limned white wine grape, balsam of peru, and chamomile

 

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS

It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

 

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

 

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Scrooge.

 

“I am!”

 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

 

“Who, and what are you?” Scrooge demanded.

 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

 

“Long Past?” inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.

 

“No. Your past.”

 

Shimmering white amber, voluminous vanilla, white musk, zdravetz, and summer flowers.

 

A COLD, CLEAR WINTER DAY

“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!”

 

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!

 

“Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. “And what is that upon your cheek?”

 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.

 

“You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit.

 

“Remember it!” cried Scrooge with fervour; “I could walk it blindfold.”

 

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!” observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.”

 

They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it!

 

Winter tuberoses bending gently in a crisp, cold breeze.

 

THE SCHOOL

“The school is not quite deserted,” said the Ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.”

 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.

 

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat.

 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

 

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.

 

“Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. “It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don’t you see him! And the Sultan’s Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I’m glad of it. What business had he to be married to the Princess!”

 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed.

 

“There’s the Parrot!” cried Scrooge. “Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. ‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?’ The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!”

 

In the corner of a desolate, dismal schoolhouse, all lonely stone walls, beeswax, and dusty wooden writing desks, stirs the scent of gold coins hidden in forest outside Baghdad, waves crashing against the hull of a Salé pirate ship, the lofty halls of Pépin le Bossu’s court, and a wild child’s home in the woods.

 

MR. FEZZIWIG'S BALL

“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson!”

 

You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had ’em up in their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and pinned ’em—seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

 

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!”

 

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter’s night.

 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

 

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

 

But if they had been twice as many—ah, four times—old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig “cut”—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

 

Mince pie, dark beer, a well-loved spruce wood fiddle, and bow resin.

 

A GOLDEN IDOL

For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

 

“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”

 

“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.

 

“A golden one.”

 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

 

“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”

 

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”

 

She shook her head.

 

“Am I?”

 

“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”

 

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

 

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”

 

“Have I ever sought release?”

 

“In words. No. Never.”

 

“In what, then?”

 

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”

 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”

 

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”

 

Glittering gold and loss beyond understanding: antiqued amber, English lavender, vetiver, and tea rose.

 

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.

 

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.

 

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!”

 

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!”

 

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

 

Pine boughs, plum pudding, spiced pears, sugared chestnuts, punch floated with oranges, boughs of holly, and myrica berries.

 

BOB CRATCHIT'S HEARTH

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

 

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

 

Which all the family re-echoed.

 

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

 

Glowing firewood and sherry-cobbler.

 

CHRISTMAS EVE ON THE MOOR

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

 

“What place is this?” asked Scrooge.

 

“A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. “But they know me. See!”

 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song—it had been a very old song when he was a boy—and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

 

Windswept moor grass, grey moss, mud, and stone warmed by a small, comfortable fire.

 

IGNORANCE AND WANT

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

 

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

 

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

 

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!”

 

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

 

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

 

The bell struck twelve.

 

Bog myrtle, wormwood accord, carrot seed, lovage, Roman chamomile, orris root, myrrh, and patchouli.

 

A GAME CALLED YES & NO

“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One half hour, Spirit, only one!”

 

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

 

“I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!”

 

“What is it?” cried Fred.

 

“It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!”

 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

 

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’ ”

 

“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried.

 

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!”

 

Mulled wine and marzipan.

 

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

 

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” said Scrooge.

 

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

 

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

 

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

 

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The 70 Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

 

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

 

“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”

 

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

 

“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”

 

Blackcurrant, myrrh, and vetiver.

 

AN ALTAR TO COLD, RIGID, DREADFUL DEATH

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

 

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

 

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

 

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

 

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

 

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.

 

Black cedar, frankincense, and dust.

 

SHADOWS OF WHAT MAY BE

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into the resorts of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit 82did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.

 

“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which we hurry now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be, in days to come!”

 

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.

 

“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. “Why do you point away?”

 

The inexorable finger underwent no change.

 

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.

 

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering.

 

A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place!

 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.

 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

 

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

A deserted, dismal grave: upturned earth, overgrown grass, and dead weeds.

 

CHANGING THE SHADOWS

“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees.

 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

 

“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”

 

The finger still was there.

 

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”

 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

 

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”

 

The kind hand trembled.

 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

 

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

 

The dawning of hope and the blossoming of charity: vanilla, orange blossom, white sandalwood, mate, red tea, and carnation.

 

WHOOP

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there: perfectly winded.

 

“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”

 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

 

“I don’t know what day of the month it is!” said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”

 

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!

 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!

 

“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

 

“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

 

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.

 

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”

 

Golden sunlight and sweet fresh air brightening a Heavenly sky on Christmas Day: crisp winter air, shimmering amber, sweet honey, with a touch of pumpkin pie, pine cone, cranberry, and bayberry.

 

++YULETIME

AUTUMN AND WINTER

Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon

Between two dates of death, while men were fain

Yet of the living light that all too soon

Three months bade wane.

 

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,

Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune

That death smote silent when he smote again.

 

First went my friend, in life's mid light of noon,

Who loved the lord of music: then the strain

Whence earth was kindled like as heaven in June

Three months bade wane.

 

A herald soul before its master's flying

Touched by some few moons first the darkling goal

Where shades rose up to greet the shade, espying

A herald soul;

 

Shades of dead lords of music, who control

Men living by the might of men undying,

With strength of strains that make delight of dole.

 

The deep dense dust on death's dim threshold lying

Trembled with sense of kindling sound that stole

Through darkness, and the night gave ear, descrying

A herald soul.

 

One went before, one after, but so fast

They seem gone hence together, from the shore

Whence we now gaze: yet ere the mightier passed

One went before;

 

One whose whole heart of love, being set of yore

On that high joy which music lends us, cast

Light round him forth of music's radiant store.

 

Then went, while earth on winter glared aghast,

The mortal god he worshipped, through the door

Wherethrough so late, his lover to the last,

One went before.

 

A star had set an hour before the sun

Sank from the skies wherethrough his heart's pulse yet

Thrills audibly: but few took heed, or none,

A star had set.

 

All heaven rings back, sonorous with regret,

The deep dirge of the sunset: how should one

Soft star be missed in all the concourse met?

 

But, O sweet single heart whose work is done,

Whose songs are silent, how should I forget

That ere the sunset's fiery goal was won

A star had set?

 

Bitter currant and dry leaves. Winter wind at dusk.

 

CHANUKKIYAH 2010

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, Asher kid'shanu b'mitzvosav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Chanukah.

 

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'asah nisim la'avoseinu, bayamim ha'hem baz'man hazeh.

 

Baruch ata Ado-nai, Elo-heinu Melech ha'olam, She'hecheyanu, vekiyemanu vehigi'anu laz'man hazeh.

 

Olive oil, beeswax, glowing amber, sweet sufganiyot, pomegranate, and fig.

 

Ha'Neiros halalu anachnu madlikin al hanisim ve'al hanifla'os, ve'al hat'shu'os ve'al hamilchamos, sh'asisa la'avoseinu bayamim hahem baz'man hazeh, al yedei kohaneicha hakedoshim. Vechol sh'monas yemei Chanukah, haneiros halalu kodesh hem. Ve'ein lanu reshus le'hishtamesh ba'hem, eh'la lir'osam bilvad, ke'dei le'hodos u'lehalel leshimcha hagadol al nisecha ve'al nifle'osecha ve'al yeshu'oshecha.

 

Ma'oz tzur yeshu'asi

Lecha na'eh leshabe'ach

Tikone bais tefilasi

Ve'sham todah nezabe'ach

Le'es Tachin Mabe'ach

Mitzar ham'nabe'ach

Az egmor beshir mizmor

Chanukas hamizbe'ach.

 

EGG NOG 2010

Sweet brandy, dark rum, heavy cream, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg.

 

GELT 2010

Sevivon, sov, sov, sov

Chanukah, hu chag tov

Chanukah, hu chag tov

Sevivon, sov, sov, sov!

 

Chag simcha hu la-am

Nes gadol haya sham

Nes gadol haya sham

Chag simcha hu la-am.

 

A bounty of chocolate coins! Dry cocoa and golden amber!

 

GINGERBREAD POPPET 2010

Warm, cozy gingerbread spiced with nutmeg, clove and cinnamon.

 

HALOA 2010

Sacred to both Demeter and Dionysus, this is a celebration of the of the pruning of the vines, the first fermentation of the year's wine, and of the consecration of the next year's planting. The service was lead by the heterai and the Eleusinian Arkhontes, and began with the preparation of a banquet that honors Demeter's bounty and the fertility aspect of Dionysus with pudenda- and phallus-shaped cakes. After the preliminary feast, the magistrates departed, and the heterai held a second rite that consisted of copious wine consumption, ritual symbolic fornication, and formal offerings of incense, grain, and cakes to sacred statues of the deities and to clay images of genitalia. Finally, the magistrates and priests were permitted to rejoin the ritual. A Priest and Priestess bore torches that symbolizes Demeter and her daughter Persephone presided over the final ceremony, which culminated in the ultimate celebration of fertility: an orgy that lasted til dawn.

 

Wine grapes, pomegranate, myrrh, frankincense and olive leaf, and the warm scent of offertory cakes.

 

JACOB'S LADDER 2010

And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

 

And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

 

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

 

And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

 

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

 

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

 

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

 

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

 

The meeting of Heaven and Earth: golden amber, galbanum, benzoin, ambrette, rockrose, costus and tonka.

 

JÓLASVEINAR 2010

The Jólasveinar are the seventy-some offspring of Grýla and Leppalúði, an ogre couple with a taste for chomping naughty children. This impish brood delights in causing discomfort, sowing confusion, and all-out raising hell during the Yule season. Their names are indicative of their malicious intentions -- Strap Loosener, Door Slammer, Window Peeper, Sausage Snatcher, Doorway Sniffer, Icebreaker -- and their creepy natures -- Lamp Shadow, Smoke Gulper, Crevice Imp. The devillish Jólasveinar finally cease their mischief and head for home at Þrettándinn.

 

Their scent is a mishmash of snow, dirt, Icelandic moss, marsh felwort, and the smushed petals of buttercups and moorland spotted orchids, with the barest hint of the scent of pilfered Christmas pastries.

 

LICK IT VIGOROUSLY

What else could possibly be more lickable at Yuletide? This is a candy cane perfume, minty, sweet and sugared.

 

[Please don’t literally Lick It. I need no cheerful holiday lawsuits, thank you!]

 

MIDNIGHT MASS 2010

I will wash my hands among the innocent; and will compass thy altar, O Lord: That I may hear the voice of thy praise: and tell of all thy wondrous works. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth. Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked: nor my life with bloody men: In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts.

 

But as for me, I have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me. My foot hath stood in the direct way: in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord.

 

In Roman Catholic tradition, the Christmas season begins liturgically on Christmas Eve, though it is forbidden to celebrate the Christmas Mass before midnight. The most devout attend Midnight Mass, celebrating both the Eucharist and the drama of the Nativity.

 

This perfume is a traditional Roman Catholic sacramental incense, most often used during a Solemn Mass. Traditionally, five tears of this incense, each encased individually in wax that has been fashioned into the shape of a nail, are inserted into the paschal candle. This is, of course, represents the Five Wounds of Our Risen Savior. Symbolically, the burning of the incense signifies spiritual fervor, the fragrance itself inspires virtue, and the rising smoke carries our prayers to God.

 

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

 

Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est. Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis.

 

Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

 

NOCHE BUENA 2010

A celebration of the Nativity: the light, uplifting incense of the Misa de Noche Buena, purple sage, and a vibrant bouquet of plumeria, chrysanthemum, tuberose, Angel's Trumpet, Mexican tiger lily, dahlia, and azucenas.

 

PEACOCK QUEEN 2010

In dramatic contrast to the soft innocence of Snow White and the dew-kissed freshness of her sister, Rose Red, this is a blood red, voluptuous rose, velvet-petaled, at the height of bloom. Haughty and imperious, vain, yet incomparably lovely to the eye, but thick with thorns of jealousy, pride and hatred.

 

ROSE RED 2010

The perfected winter rose, dew covered and freshly cut.

 

SNOW WHITE 2010

A chilly, bright perfume: flurries of virgin snow, crisp winter wind and the faintest breath of night-blooming flowers.

 

WINTER-TIME

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;

Blinks but an hour or two; and then,

A blood-red orange, sets again.

 

Before the stars have left the skies,

At morning in the dark I rise;

And shivering in my nakedness,

By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

 

Close by the jolly fire I sit

To warm my frozen bones a bit;

Or with a reindeer-sled, explore

The colder countries round the door.

 

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap

Me in my comforter and cap;

The cold wind burns my face, and blows

Its frosty pepper up my nose.

 

Black are my steps on silver sod;

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And tree and house, and hill and lake,

Are frosted like a wedding cake.

 

Sweet, soft snow.

 

WOODS IN WINTER

When winter winds are piercing chill,

And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

That overbrows the lonely vale.

 

O'er the bare upland, and away

Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

And gladden these deep solitudes.

 

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

The crystal icicle is hung.

 

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

Pour out the river's gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater's iron rings,

And voices fill the woodland side.

 

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

And the song ceased not with the day!

 

But still wild music is abroad,

Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

 

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

I listen, and it cheers me long.

 

Wild hemlock and juniper berries scattered in the snow beneath leafless trees bedecked with glittering icicles.

 

YULE 2010

The Holly King and Oak King each hold sway for half of the year, and engage in an epic, eternal battle at Litha and Yule. In truth, they are each a half of the whole -- known by many names: Pashupati, Caerwiden, Herne, Pan, Puck, Cernunnos, the Green Man, the Horned God -- and as the Holly and Oak Kings represent the light and dark halves of the year, thus do they also represent the light and dark halves of the deity, and thereby, of ourselves.

 

During the darkness of the year, though it seems cold, barren, and bleak, the earth holds the warmth of life deep within itself, and in the depth of its shadows is the eternal promise of renewal and rebirth.

 

It is Yule, and the Holly King has slain the Oak: blood red holly berry, mistletoe, wild thyme, verbena, cinquefoil, hemp, winter rose, evergreen, frankincense, juniper, and myrrh.

 

++THE LAST UNICORN

THE LILAC WOOD

It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.

 

Ageless trees, everblooming flowers, brilliant grass, and soft shadows.

 

THE LAST UNICORN

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.

 

Frosty lilac petals, iris pallida root, orris, violet leaf, white chocolate, coconut, wild lettuce, white sandalwood, and oakmoss.

 

THE BUTTERFLY

Then one afternoon the butterfly wobbled out of a breeze and lit on the tip of her horn. He was velvet all over, dark and dusty, with golden spots on his wings, and he was as thin as a flower petal. Dancing along her horn, he saluted her with his curling feelers. “I am a roving gambler. How do you do?”

 

Fuzzy brown tonka bean, golden amber, bergamot, and petitgrain.

 

THE MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL

There were nine wagons, each draped in black, each drawn by a lean black horse, and each baring barred sides like teeth when the wind blew through the black hangings. The lead wagon was driven by a squat old woman, and it bore signs on its shrouded sides that said in big letters: MOMMY FORTUNA’S MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL. And below, in smaller print: Creatures of night, brought to light.

 

Cruelty and confinement, small magics and penny illusions: galbanum, teak, myrrh, narcissus, patchouli, cacao, labdanum, agarwood, lavender, neroli, and black moss.

 

THE NINTH CAGE

The unicorn hardly heard him. She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man’s night loves cold iron, and while the unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and her blood to rain. The bars of her cage must have had some sort of spell on them, for they never stopped whispering evilly to one another in clawed, pattering voices.

 

A claustrophobic blend of iron and oak.

 

ARACHNE OF LYDIA

Rukh was standing before a cage that contained nothing but a small brown spider weaving a modest web across the bars. “Arachne of Lydia,” he told the crowd. “Guaranteed the greatest weaver in the world — her fate’s the proof of it. She had the bad luck to defeat the goddess Athena in a weaving contest. Athena was a sore loser, and Arachne is now a spider, creating only for Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival, by special arrangement. Warp of snow and woof of flame, and never any two the same. Arachne.”

 

Strung on the loom of iron bars, the web was very simple and almost colorless, except for an occasional rainbow shiver when the spider scuttled out on it to put a thread right. But it drew the onlookers’ eyes — and the unicorn’s eyes as well — back and forth and steadily deeper, until they seemed to be looking down into great rifts in the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne’s web held the world together. The unicorn shook herself free with a sigh, and saw the real web again. It was very simple, and almost colorless.

 

“It isn’t like the others,” she said. “No,” Schmendrick agreed grudgingly. “But there’s no credit due to Mommy Fortuna for that. You see, the spider believes. She sees those cat’s-cradles herself and thinks them her own work. Belief makes all the difference to magic like Mommy Fortuna’s. Why, if that troop of witlings withdrew their wonder, there’d be nothing left of all her witchery but the sound of a spider weeping. And no one would hear it.”

 

Soft brown and Tyrian purple: dusty clove and blackcurrant.

 

MOMMY FORTUNA

When the first wagon drew even with the place where the unicorn lay asleep, the old woman suddenly pulled her black horse to a stop. All the other wagons stopped too and waited silently as the old woman swung herself to the ground with an ugly grace. Gliding close to the unicorn, she peered down at her for a long time, and then said, “Well. Well, bless my old husk of a heart. And here I thought I’d seen the last of them.” Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air. “If he knew,” she said and she showed pebbly teeth as she smiled. “But I don’t think I’ll tell him.”

 

Honey, gunpowder, and pleonectic, twopenny magics.

 

UNICORN HORN: PACK OF SERIES I IMP'S EARS

Imp's ears are not sold individually for this series.

They must be purchased in a set.

This set contains 7 imps for $38.50US, and contains samples of:

 

* The Lilac Wood

* The Last Unicorn

* The Butterfly

* The Midnight Carnival

* The Ninth Cage

* Arachne of Lydia

* Mommy Fortuna

 

Over at the Black Phoenix Gazette, join us as we count down the 13 days 'til Halloween.