The Wineberry Cross is a Temple within the Hedge. This place is associated with a Goblin Fruit called Wineberry Blush.
Overview[]
Somewhere near the “center” of the Hedge (at least, so the stories suggest) sits a tall cross made of dark wood, as tall as three men standing on one another’s shoulders. The cross is choked by coils of wineberry vines, the fruits lush but the barbs sharp. Tangled up in the bramble vines is a scarecrow, an effigy of burlap and felt, its “skin” painted stark white with bone dust. The Hedge all around this has formed a natural cathedral of sorts, hard bark vines meshing together above the cross like a pair of fingers (“here is the church, here is the steeple”). Light from above filters down, highlighting the pollen dust caught there.
The hobs in the area claim that the figure in on the cross is a representation of their “savior”, a fellow named Jack of the Crows. Story goes that Jack is “thrice-blooded,” somehow a mix of hob, human and Keeper, making him close to a changeling (but perhaps something more). They say that he was attended to by a motley all his own, a group of very special changelings (such as John the Water-bearer and Matthew the Collector), but was betrayed by his close friend, Judah the Chariot. The hobs have all manner of stories about Jack of the Crows: his father was the first Keeper; he’ll unite all the four Courts into one; he comes from the secretive (and perhaps nonexistent) Court of Dusk; he can bring fallen hobgoblins back to life, and so on and so forth. The hobs mostly worship him alone, but some gather in congregations, offering him loudly-shouted prayer and babbling at him in garbage tongues.
- Offering a bit of worship to Jack of the Crows (always something sacrificed: a drop of blood, a mashed up goblin fruit, an oddment cast to flame as a burnt offering) grants a changeling one point of returned Glamour.
References[]
- Dancers in the Dusk, p. 90-91