Preview: The Butter Cat

First… We FUNDED! TALES FROM STOLKI’S HALL is 102% funded on Kickstarter! Thank you so much to everyone who has been a part of this campaign! I’m so happy! Now…

Do you know what a butter cat is? In Scandinavian folklore, there was a spell that could bring a spindle of yarn to life in the form of a cat. The cat would sneak into a neighbor’s house and drink a bucket of milk dry, soaking it all up into their wool. Then the cat would return to its creator and disgorge the milk into a new pale. Its work done, the cat would dissolve back into strands of yarn in a day. Unless, of course, it didn’t, and the wool and button cat stuck around…

Rachael Smith is an award-winning writer and comic artist, creators of such titles as Quarantine Comix, Wired Up Wrong, and The Rabbit. She has worked for Titan, Image, Boom, The New Yorker, many more, and I’m thrilled to have her grace Norrøngard with this touching tale.

Be sure to check out the amazing illustration of a butter cat at the end of the post, art by Bryan Syme.

The stars in the huge night sky were twinkling brighter than ever, as the skald and the butter cat trudged the last few snowy yards to the broadside of Stolki’s Hall. The dimly audible sounds of laughter coming from bellies full of sausage, cheese, sourdough, and mead made the two friends keen to get inside, but they were both aware that tonight’s activity was not something to be rushed.

The skald leant his weary bones against the tavern wall and sunk down dramatically into a seated position in the snow.

“C’mere, old friend. I need to sort those flowers out.”

The butter cat sidled toward him and lay down gratefully against his leg, looking up at its master with dull gray button eyes. The skald began to pluck several, withered brown flowers out of the tangled webs of yarn that made up the cat’s body.

“This’ll be the last tavern tonight, cat, I promise. Provided I can charm the barkeep into letting us kip on the benches, we may even be able to sleep indoors tonight.”

The worn-out flowers were tossed into the frozen winds, and the skald carefully took a folded handkerchief out of his belt pouch.

“Managed to pinch some cornflowers from behind that farm we ‘borrowed’ lunch from yesterday...these should help with the smell for a few more days, eh?”

The skald had no way of knowing this: but the butter cat loved these moments more than anything in the world, and the flowers which the skald wove into its woolly fur were its most treasured of treasures. This changing of the flowers had become their weekly routine, ever since the butter cat had defied all odds and gone on existing past its one-day life expectancy. Out in the cold icy air of Norrøngard, it was fine, but indoors, this six-month old butter cat didn’t tend to smell all that great.

Finishing with the flowers, the skald fished his lyre out of his bag and began polishing it with the now-empty handkerchief. The butter cat sat up straight and strained its neck around to admire its new decorations.

“Do you think it sounds more like a sing-song crowd, or a poetry crowd in there, friend?” asked the skald. The butter cat had no way of answering, but the skald never seemed to mind this. The cat merely looked at him, with what it hoped was an intense and serious expression. The skald laughed, kindly. “I agree! A few boisterous songs would offer some good distraction for you to sneak behind the bar and steal us some milk, yes? I might even get some coins tossed to me in the process.”

The butter cat stood up obediently and lifted up its limp, yarn tail as high as it could manage. It was always happiest when the skald gave it a job to do, and it was always keen to get it done quickly. “Woah there, friend,” chuckled the skald, “let me get this thing tuned first.”

So the butter cat sat back down and patiently listened to each string of the lyre be coaxed into tuneful harmony.

“You go on lasting so long as I still have a quest for you, eh, cat? Hopefully, someday I won’t need to exist on stolen milk anymore and you can retire to the High Father’s dairy parlor.”

The skald laughed softly, and the butter cat put a tiny paw on his knee. The cat wasn’t sure what a High Father’s dairy parlor was, but it was certainly sure that it didn’t ever want to go anywhere without its master.

The skald finished tuning and the two friends brushed themselves down, ready to enter the mead hall. The butter cat clambered up onto the skald’s shoulder, and the skald threw the doors open.

They were greeted with an exuberant and rowdy crowd of farmers, fishers, and hunters, drinking, eating, hollering, but most importantly, betting on a flyting match that was underway in the middle of the hall.

A common farmhand was half-sitting-half-lying on top of a table and a wealthy-looking scholar was pacing drunkenly, yet defiantly, in circles around him. They were throwing rhyming quips at one another which were getting ruder by the minute, much to the crowd’s delight. A rotund merchant wearing a heavy coin bag and obviously taking charge of the bets, was watching the match with calculated disinterest.

The skald turned to the butter cat and whispered, slowly:

“Your plan hasn’t changed – but mine has. If I can win this thing, we’ll be rolling in coin! To the bar with you. I’ll whistle for you when I’m done.”

So the butter cat jumped silently off the skald’s shoulder onto a nearby table, and, as the skald approached the merchant to ask if he could take the winner, it scarpered away.

Meandering quickly around furniture and the legs of drunken patrons, the butter cat soon found the large bar, and crept behind.

The bar concealed a cacophony that was quite different from that of the flyting matches: Stolki’s staff were almost falling over one another piling up dirty drinking horns and searching vainly for clean ones, orders were becoming muddled up and spilled, pieces of fruit, cheese, and bread were falling from huge platters as the folk carrying them struggled to get around each other. The butter cat squeezed into a cubby hole full of old, discarded bottles, and waited until it could see more clearly.

A harried looking woman bustled behind the bar, her arms full of dirty horns.

“That table of Karls are still waiting on their horsemeat!”

“What do you want me to do about that, you old bag?! Talk to the folk working the fire pit!”

“They told me they were waiting on you to give them—“

“A new challenger for the scholar!”

This announcement from the hall caused many of the staff behind the bar to forget themselves and drop whatever jobs they were doing to prop themselves up on the bar counter-top to stand up taller in order to see the newcomer.

“It’s a skald! He’s challenging that clever drunk fella!”

“He’s quite dishy! He’s got a lovely face.”

“A lovely bum too...!”

“You’re terrible!”

Now that the back of the bar area had been cleared of people, the butter cat could see the cold slab in the corner, housing the dairy products and–ja!–five jugs of milk. It made its move. Jumping between hanging metal pans it carefully made its way over to the other side of the bar. Once from atop a frying pan it saw a mouse run across the floor, but immediately turned its head away from it–this was no time to get distracted. It had a quest to complete.

“Ooh I really don’t like that drunk one,” the staff continued.

“I wish he’d stop stopping the match every two seconds.”

“Yes. If you think someone’s stolen a rhyme then wait until the end, surely?”

“Oh, what do you know?”

“I know plenty!”

The butter cat was within reach of the cold slab, but it would have nothing to hide behind once it was there. It would need to be quick. The bickering from the staff gave it courage, and it pounced. Once on the slab the cat sank its head into the jugs of milk, magically emptying them into its yarn body, which bulged slightly and whitened with the creamy liquid. The cat managed to empty three of them before three things happened:

The skald cried out in pain, the kitchen maids screamed all at once, and a scuffle broke out in the main hall as someone was roughly apprehended.

“He’s stabbed him!” shouted one of the staff.

To find out what happens next, consider backing Tales from Stolki’s Hall on Kickstarter.