Heimchen’s Vigil

A Folkloric Power-up Prompt Response

Eisenhain lay folded into the mountains, surrounded by a thick forest of fir and pine pressed close around the village. The houses were low and old, their beams darkened by generations of smoke and winters that arrived early and stayed late. Paths between them had been worn smooth by boots and hooves and the weight of repetition.

Beyond the last fence post, the ground rose sharply and the trees thickened. Marks had been cut into stone and trunk alike generations ago, sigils whose shapes no one argued over anymore. They were simply there. The villagers said they kept the forest to itself.

Winter had other habits.

The storm arrived before dusk, rolling down from the high passes with the sound of breath drawn deep. Snow came sideways, then harder, then steadier, until the village pulled inward by instinct. Shutters closed. Fires were fed.

By the time the world went dark, Eisenhain was quiet.

Inside one of the homes, Ulrich leaned closer to the hearth, his shadow stretching long against the straw-covered floor. Above them, a heavy stone shifted on the roof under a gust of wind, making the timber rafters groan. Jakob, his son, sat next to him.

Ulrich didn’t look at Jakob when he spoke.

“Your Mutter says you wandered again,” he said. “Near the sigils.”

Jakob shrugged, a practiced, small movement. “I didn’t cross them.”

Ulrich nodded once, acknowledging Jakob.

“They’re an agreement on boundaries,” he said. “They don’t stop you. They tell you when you’ve decided not to listen anymore.”

The wind pushed against the house again. Somewhere outside, iron rang once. Just a knock, a hinge complaining, perhaps. Jakob’s head lifted anyway.

Ulrich saw it. He always did.

“That sound,” Jakob said. “Do you hear it?”

“I hear the weather.”

Jakob frowned. “There’s something under it.”

Ulrich stared into the fire a long moment before he spoke again.

“They tell a story here,” he said at last. “Not for the sake of it. Because it had to be told.”

Jakob leaned closer, drawn by the drop in his father’s voice more than the words themselves.

“It’s about a child,” Ulrich continued. “A good one, by all accounts. Helpful and quiet. The child no one worried over too much.” He shifted the log with the poker. Sparks jumped and died. “That’s how these stories usually start.”

Jakob frowned. “Then why do they call him foolish?”

Ulrich exhaled through his nose. Not a laugh, but not hard enough to be a sigh.

“That’s the name the story gave him,” he said. “Not the one he was born with.”

Outside, the wind moved again, threading through the trees. For a moment it sounded like nothing more than weather. Ulrich waited until it passed.

“The foolish child lived here,” he said. “In Eisenhain. Long before you. Long before me. And on a night like this, when winter came down early and everyone else stayed close, he did what children sometimes do.”

Jakob’s eyes were fixed on the fire now.

“He listened,” Ulrich said. “That’s how the story goes, at least.”

The story begins on a night like this, when a storm pressed cold and snow against the house. It rattled the door, testing the sigils cut into the oak generations ago. But the boy—the one they call the Foolish Child—wasn’t looking at the fire. He was looking at the smoke-hole, watching the snow fall through the dark, listening to a sound that shouldn’t be there.

The sound did not rise or fall with the wind. It kept its own measure.

Between gusts, it was clearer. Between silences, it remained. A dull, heavy note, repeated at a pace too slow for weather and too regular for chance.

The foolish child counted without meaning to. One. Then the space. Then another.

Then, the storm eased all at once. It wasn’t finished or passed, but reduced, as if something had decided there was no need to press so hard anymore. The wind fell away from the walls. Snow still came down, but straight now, no longer driven. The house settled into itself. The rafters stopped complaining. The fire burned steady.

That was when the sound stood out. Later, people would say it was iron.

Bells, they would call it.

The foolish child rose from the hearth and went to the door. He did not open it at first; he listened. The sound kept its pace. Slow. Even. He hesitated, then drew the latch and pulled the door just enough to see.

The yard lay white and still. The barn doors were shut and barred. Inside, the animals were quiet, packed close for warmth the way they had been taught. Breath steamed from the cracks in the wood. Hooves shifted, then stilled. The sound carried across the snow softly.

Behind him, the house remained, his parents slept near the fire. He could hear their breathing.

He stepped back inside long enough to look at them properly.

Nothing was wrong. Outside, the sound kept time.

The foolish child took his coat from the peg. He did not wake anyone, nor did he take a lantern. He just left.

The door closed behind him with a sound that did not carry.

He could still hear the sound. It didn’t come from any one place. It didn’t echo. It didn’t move closer. It stayed where it was, steady and unconcerned, repeating at an interval too slow to belong to wind or wood.

He walked past the fence without thinking about it.

The sigils were cut into the posts at knee height, some freshened, some worn thin by time and weather. He slowed when he reached them. Everyone did, even when they said they didn’t believe anymore. He looked at the marks, then beyond them, into the trees.

The sound kept time without him as he hesitated at the line.

Then, he stepped over it.

Nothing happened. The forest did not acknowledge him.

Behind him, in the distance, the house remained where it was. Warm, lit, and waiting for him to return.

But he pressed on, deeper into the forest.

The forest closed in quickly, the way it always did. Branches hung low with snow, bending without breaking. The ground sloped unevenly, rising in places, dropping away in others. His boots found old paths without his noticing. Tracks that had been made and remade until they no longer looked like paths at all.

The sound was clearer here. Not louder, but clearer. It kept time without reference to him. He could have stopped and it would have continued. That was the part that mattered.

After a while, the trees thinned.

The forest opened into a clearing he had never seen before, though later people would insist it had always been there. The wind moved differently in that space, circling instead of passing through. Snow did not collect the same way. The ground showed through in places, the grass matted and brown.

The foolish child did not step into the clearing all at once.

He stopped at the tree line and looked.

A rock shelf sat low and deliberate in the center of the clearing. Snow had been brushed from its surface. Not recently, but thoroughly. The ground around it was disturbed and darker than the rest of the forest floor, as if many feet had stood there over time and learned where not to tread.

From a distance, the objects looked like refuse. Skins folded without care. Straps coiled and left. Something pale that might have been bone.

He moved closer.

The masks were carved, not crudely. Faces stretched into shapes meant to be seen at a distance. Mouths opened wider than a person’s could. Eyes cut large and empty. The wood was smoothed where hands would grip it. Darkened along the edges where breath had passed over it again and again.

The skins were heavy. Goat, stag, something older than either. They still held their shape, as if they remembered the bodies that had worn them. The horns were real. Filed at the base. Balanced for weight.

The sound was louder now. The dull, weighted answer of metal built to be struck and keep going. Cowbells, he realized, the kind used in high pasture where fog swallowed sound. Thick-walled. Slow to speak. Impossible to ignore once they did.

The belts were made of iron, old and weathered. He reached out and touched one. It was cold, even through his glove.

The sound did not change.

He drew his hand back, suddenly aware of the way the clearing held itself. The way the forest leaned inward without crossing the line. The way the air moved differently here, circling, as if counting.

That’s when the sound stopped. Replaced with two words.

“You’re late.”

The voice came from behind him. Close enough that it had always been there.

He turned.

A woman stood at the edge of the clearing, just inside the trees.

She wore white, though it wasn’t clean. Wool layered over linen, heavy and practical, the kind meant for walking long distances in weather that did not care if you arrived. Her hair was pale and braided down her back, bound with leather ties darkened by use. A wide wicker basket was strapped across her shoulders, riding high between them, deep enough to carry weight without spilling.

She did not look old, but she did not look young.

Her face held the shape of someone who had stopped needing to explain herself.

When she shifted her weight, one leg moved differently than the other. Not a limp, more a correction to her gait. The rhythm of her body adjusting to a rule the ground had learned to accommodate.

She did not look at the altar, nor did she look at him. She looked past the child, as if checking whether something had arrived behind him that hadn’t yet caught up.

Then she spoke again, and this time he understood he was meant to hear it.

“You followed the sound.”

The foolish child did not know her name yet. But the forest did.

Perchta did not look at him when she spoke.

“You will stay,” she said. “You will take what is laid out. You will walk the boundaries of this valley when winter comes down from the high passes. You will wear the bells so the sound has a place to live.”

The foolish child stared at her.

“That’s not—” He stopped, then swallowed hard. “No.”

She turned then, slow enough that the movement felt measured.

“No?” she repeated, as if confirming the word’s shape.

“I won’t,” he answered. His voice shook now, the way it does when a child realizes danger. “I didn’t come here for that. I just followed a sound.”

“That is why you came,” she said.

“They call you Heimchen,” she said. “Lost child.”

He frowned. “My name is—”

“Unnecessary,” she said. “Not because you’re gone, but because you’re already half out of place.”

He shook his head. “I’ll go back. I can still go back.”

Perchta looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded once.

“Yes,” she said. “For now.”

She reached back and slid one strap from her shoulder, letting the basket settle lower against her spine. The wicker creaked under the shift of weight.

“You can go back to the house,” she continued. “You can sit by the fire. You can sleep. In the morning, the village will say the storm passed cleanly.”

The foolish child said nothing.

“The sound will remain,” she went on. “Children will hear it. Some will stop at the marks. Some won’t. Heimchen alone does not work anymore.”

He clenched his hands. “Then fix it.”

She looked at him. “This is the fix.”

He took a step back without meaning to. “But I’m just a child.”

“Yes,” she said.

She stepped closer. The clearing cooled, not sharply, but evenly, as if something had been adjusted. Her shadow lengthened across the snow. For a moment, it did not match her shape. The nose drew out. The mouth widened. Iron showed through the white.

Then it was gone.

She gestured to the altar, then her voice came soft.

“It is work that must be done. They have grown soft, Heimchen. If they will not fear the forest, they must fear you.”

The foolish child looked at the masks, at the skins, at the belts laid in their careful row. He understood then that nothing he said would change what needed doing. Only whether he would be the one to do it.

He stepped forward.

“The village has grown careless,” she said. “They hear the bells and think of weather. They mark the trees and forget to look past them. Heimchen alone does not work anymore.”

“Begin,” she said, again gesturing at the altar.

He hesitated only long enough to recognize the order of things. The masks were arranged by size. The skins folded by weight. The belts laid from narrow to wide, each ring set to hang where it would strike another when the body moved.

He took the smallest belt first.

It was heavier than it looked, as if carrying some hidden weight. When he lifted it, the iron answered itself with a dull sound that settled into the clearing and stayed there. He wrapped it around his waist and fastened it with numb fingers. The weight pulled him down and held him there, as if asking whether he intended to stand up straight under it. More iron followed, crossing his chest and hips. Each one added its own sound, slow and unhurried. The bells did not ring yet. They waited.

The skins came next.

He shrugged into the first and nearly staggered. It clung to him, stiff with age, the inside worn smooth where bodies had moved inside it again and again. The fur held the smell of cold and sweat and something older than either. When he breathed, it breathed with him.

More skins followed. His hands no longer felt like his own. They looked larger. Thicker. When he flexed his fingers, the motion carried farther than it should have.

Perchta watched without comment.

Then, he put on the horns.

They were not attached to anything. Just laid there, curved and balanced, their bases worn to fit a shape that had not been his until now. He lifted them together, feeling the way their weight wanted to pull his head forward.

“Slowly,” Perchta said.

He lowered his head and set them in place.

Then, the bells spoke again.

Not all at once. One answered another. Then another. A low, layered rhythm that moved through his chest and into his teeth. He felt it more than he heard it, a vibration that matched the one he had followed out of the house.

The foolish child straightened.

The clearing adjusted around him.

He was taller now, fuller. The skins sat correctly. The belts fell where they were meant to. The bells rang when he shifted his weight, each movement answered by iron. He looked down at his legs. His feet were no longer his, they were hooves like a goat’s.

Perchta stepped forward and reached out. She took his chin in her hand and turned his face slightly, assessing. Her touch was cold, but not unkind.

“Yes,” she said.

She released him and stepped back.

“You will walk when the nights grow long,” she continued. “You will keep the old paths loud. You will turn children back before they learn how far listening can take them.”

She met his eyes.

“You are not Heimchen anymore.”

The sound swelled as he breathed.

“They will call you Krampus.”

The name settled into him the way the belts had. He realized it wasn’t identity, but function.

He tried to speak. The sound that came out was not a voice. It was a howl.

Perchta inclined her head, just enough to acknowledge the work was accepted.

“Go,” she said.

And he did.

And when the gray of morning came to the village, the storm had done its work and moved on. Snow lay clean across the yards and paths, smoothing the village into something orderly again. Smoke rose from chimneys. Doors opened. People stepped out and began the work of counting what winter had taken and what it had spared.

That was when they noticed the child was missing.

The father was the first to see the door. It was unbarred. He looked around the home, nothing was taken. Nothing overturned. But the foolish child was not in his bed.

They found the footprints in the yard. Small, leading away from the house and toward the fence line. Someone said his name once, out of habit, then stopped. It didn’t feel useful.

The tracks crossed the packed snow and reached the sigils cut into the posts.

And then they ended. Simply gone, as if the snow had decided it had recorded enough.

People stood there a long moment, looking past the marks and into the trees. The forest held its shape. Branches bowed under snow. No movement. No sound worth naming.

Someone said, “He wandered.”

Someone else nodded. “Foolish child.”

They searched because that was what you did. They went as far as the old paths allowed. They called until their voices thinned and sounded foolish themselves. By midday, they were cold and tired and saying the same things over again.

Winter takes what listens.

By afternoon, the story had passed through village ears and mouth. The child had wandered too far. The sigils had been crossed. The forest had done what it always did.

That night, the house stayed quiet. Outside the village, beyond the last fence post, the sound moved through the trees. Slow. Even. Purposeful. Iron-on-iron. The hollow bells.

In the years that followed, Eisenhain did not speak his name.

Children still wandered. They always will. Curiosity did not vanish just because a story gained a sharper edge. But they did not go as far. And when they returned, they came back shaken, breathless, sometimes crying. They spoke of a shape in the trees. Of horns glimpsed through snow. A mountain of fur. Of bells that sounded close enough to touch and yet never came closer.

Always bells.

The wolves stopped crossing the lower pasture. They paced the treeline and turned away. Tracks circled and doubled back where they never had before. The old men noticed. They said nothing.

During the Rauhnächte, the sound grew louder.

People shut their shutters earlier then. Fires were fed before they went low. Children were kept close, not by threat but by habit. By the sense that something was moving through the forest that had opinions about where they belonged.

They said the bells were part of winter. That was easier. Eisenhain endured. The winters remained hard, but not cruel. Livestock survived. Roofs held. The forest stayed at its edge.

Ulrich stopped speaking.

The fire had burned down to coals. The house felt smaller again, the way it always did when a story finished.

Jakob didn’t look up right away. “So he became a monster,” he said finally.

Ulrich shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He became a boundary.”

Jakob frowned. “But people say—”

“People say a lot of things,” Ulrich cut in, not sharply, but firm. “They like stories where danger looks like cruelty. It makes them feel smarter for surviving it.”

He leaned forward and added another log to the fire. Sparks lifted up the hearth and died.

“If he were what they say now,” Ulrich continued, “children wouldn’t come back. Wolves wouldn’t turn away. The bells wouldn’t ring outward.”

Jakob’s brow furrowed. “Outward?”

“Toward the forest,” Ulrich said. “Away from us.”

Jakob was quiet. He thought about the children he knew. The ones who’d come home pale and shaken. The ones who never quite explained what they’d seen.

“So what was he really doing?” Jakob asked.

Ulrich looked at him then.

“He kept winter honest,” he said. “He scared children back toward the fire before the forest learned their names.”

Outside, the wind moved through the trees. Just wind this time. Or close enough.

Ulrich reached out and rested a hand on Jakob’s shoulder.

“That’s why you don’t follow sounds you don’t understand,” he said. “And that’s why, if you ever think you hear bells in a storm, you come home.”

Jakob nodded.

Outside Eisenhain, beyond the sigils and the last fence post, the sound kept time.