It was one of those very common objects. One of those things everybody knows, but almost doesn’t see. More symbol of naive and banal taste than actually having a taste of its own. It was one of those things that you see on the desk or on the top of the bookcase of older people. One of those things that is produced in abundance and sold at stalls at the forest markets or from small shops with decorative household items.
The wood from which the face was carved had an unusual purple hue for a small figurine of this sort, but apart from that it had those typical bat wings made from mice skin and the vampire teeth that was carved out of owl pellets. The hair made of spruce leaves and the little eyes made of sea shell were just what you would expect, but the drilled hole in the forehead was untypical.
It stood on five legs instead of the usual six, because once long time ago someone had dropped it. The legs and the pedestal was carved from oak root, so the fall must’ve been from a considerable height. Maybe it fell from a cabin in the pine trees maybe out from one of the holes in the granite boulders. Anyway... the incident had been forgotten, and the clockwork in the tummy had not been harmed in the fall. It still worked, playing Gnumar dar Gnumar if you wound it up and pressed the red nose of the evil tummy troll that was made of brass. His face was actually not badly modelled. The sixteen troll eyes and the big red nose – painted with that sort of lacquer that smells of juniper - had a haunting quality to it, and the same could be said of the sound the little strings and horns inside the figure made when the cogwheels made them play the tune.
When you touched the copper phallus that rose from the loins of the small figure to up over its head you could still cure light fevers and a snotty nose, but it could not any longer cure psirosium or deadly pigeon plague. It was too old and too badly made for that.
But Ormebaard didn’t care. He had received it as a gift from his great-grandmother, and was very fond of it.
Illustration by Swedish illustrator John Bauer -ca 1911