Herne

He was the king's huntsman, and the best of them.

Windsor Forest, the reign of Richard II. A stag turned on the king and Herne put himself between them, took the wound meant for his master, and was dying on the forest floor when a stranger came out of the trees and offered a cure.

It worked. The stranger cut the antlers from the dead stag and bound them to Herne's head, and he stood up alive.

But there is no such thing as a free cure. The price was the thing he was best at — his skill with the hunt, taken from him the moment he was healed. The other huntsmen turned on him. He was disgraced, and he went out into the forest and hanged himself from an oak.

That is where it should have ended.

Instead he came back. Antlers still on him, riding through Windsor at night at the head of a hunt nobody wants to meet, and men have reported seeing him for six hundred years. Shakespeare put him in a play in 1597 and wrote about him as something the locals already knew.

An oak fell in Windsor Great Park in 1863. They still call it Herne's Oak.

Poured solid in one piece, antlers and all, then oxidized deep so the face comes forward out of the metal. Bearded, and older than it looks.

They took everything he was good at. He kept the antlers.

Specifications

• Solid .999 fine silver, hand poured
• 33mm tall × 30mm wide
• Hand-oxidized recesses, polished high points
• 4mm black braided leather cord, 22", gunmetal magnetic barrel clasp
• Signed Certificate of Authenticity
• Poured and finished in Northfield, Vermont

Worn for a lifetime. Passed to the next.