 They say it's a legend. Just a story we tell to scare children. But I'm here to tell you, not to believe a word of it. You would do well to beware the Yule Cat, no matter what they say. My cousins and I grew up in the Icelandic countryside and spent most of our lives within a stone's throw of our birthplace. For two years in December, my saintly grandmother would welcome us into her home so my parents could go Christmas shopping or have some time to themselves. She invited all my cousins as well, a brood of eight when we were all assembled. And many nights after granddad had made excuses for going off to the pub, grandma would gather us around the fire and tell us stories. Stories about fairies, Queen Mob and her ilk, and of the elves and darker things that had once been a part of this landscape. She told us stories of Icelandic heroes and filled our dreams with monsters that begged to be slain as we took on our favorite champions roles. But especially around the Christmas season, her favorite story was of the Yule Cat. He is a giant creature capable of stepping over palisades and creeping into tall buildings. He punishes the lazy and rewards those who work hard and do their work year round. If you neglect your duties, the Yule Cat will find your children. Never doubt. His favorite meal is children without new clothes and winter, their parents having spent their summers at leisure, thankless children he hates as well, those who scorn their parents work in favor of frivolous things. So be thankful, my children, that your parents work hard to keep such dark things away. Most of the stories about the Yule Cat involved naughty children who went into the woods at night, spoiled children whose parents found that the Yule Cat had dragged them out through their window and gobbled them up, and good children who went rushing home on Christmas Eve to get their clothing gifts before the Yule Cat could get them. My little brother, Sven, always held a deep fear of the Yule Cat, but I can honestly never remember a time when I was afraid of it. It always seemed goofy to me, and in my head, I just imagined a cat with giant legs that looked like big noodles. Its body was way high in the air and its legs just wiggled around beneath it. I had drawn a picture of it for my grandmother once, and she had only smiled and ruffled my hair. Let us hope that if the Yule Cat finds you, he is as silly as you think he is. I had smiled about the idea of meeting the Yule Cat then, thinking of all the monsters and beasts my cousins and I had slain in our dreams. I am not smiling as I write this. I came to live with my grandparents when I was 15. My father and mother had been killed in a car accident when a semi-truck slid on the ice and hit them head on. They said they died instantly, but all I knew was that Sven and I were suddenly without parents. There was never any question where we would go, of course. My grandmother opened her home to us without a second thought. I lived with grandpa three years in his grave. She said it would be nice to have some company. I lived with her until I was 23, attending university and getting my degree so I could begin a career in architecture and then taking up residence in my parents' old house so I could maintain the family homestead. The house was on my grandparents' land, so it wasn't as though we had never been back. Sven didn't like to go back to our old home claiming there were too many memories there and my grandmother sheltered him quite a bit. When I moved back, I invited him to come live with me, but he declined. He was 17 and showed none of my drive. I was worried that if he stayed, my grandmother would coddle him forever, but that was his decision. I decorated my old home like it was my first Christmas. The lights and decorations still in the crawl space as they had always been and my house had shown out against the darkness like a beacon. My tree stood in full view of the window and I had bought presents for everyone. I had spent much of my life without much money and now that I had a lucrative job, I decided to take advantage of the holiday season and spoil my relatives a bit. I was sitting snug by the fire, a cup of spiced hot chocolate in my hand and a slight buzz when my phone rang. My grandma's smiling picture showed from the home screen and I picked it up as I tried to compose my voice. Grandma was used to people being a little drunk. My granddad had been pickled more than sober during his life, but I was still at an age where I was self-conscious about her seeing me like that. I answered the phone and she immediately started in without greeting. You have not come by to get your yule clothes. You will need to come back now. I wasn't used to my grandmother being so forceful. She was usually very mild, but she seemed upset about this to an irrational level. Tomorrow was Christmas Day when all of my cousins and their families gathered for presents and grandma's usual Christmas feast. What grandma was referring to was her tradition of giving us clothes to keep the yule cat away. This was my first Christmas away from home. I usually got them from grandma when I woke up on the 23rd, but I guess I had missed it since I had moved out. Oh, that's okay, Gran. I'll just give them tomorrow. I'll be there with the others and you can just give them to me. No. You must come get them now. And hurry. I need you here before the sun goes down or the yule cat will get you. I rolled my eyes. Gran, I think the yule cat will understand if I don't want to go out in the snow to get clothes. Can't I just come by tomorrow? Her voice went from a severe matriarch to a pleading older woman in the blink of an eye. Please, it's your first time away from home and I want you to be safe. I can leave them on the porch if you don't have time to come in. But please come and get them, please. She sounded so scared that I couldn't disagree. I told her I would get dressed and drive over before sunset and she sighed in relief and thanked me. I dressed warmly in my snow pants and a heavy coat. My muffler and gloves came on next along with a pair of snow boots and a flashlight just in case. All of this went on over whatever I was already wearing, jeans and a t-shirt and thick socks, and stepped out into the ankle deep snow. I put a hand on my own jeep and decided against it. My head was a little sloshy and I knew it would only take a few minutes with the heat blasting before I'd be asleep and sliding on the icy road. Instead, I decided to walk. My grandmother's house was only about two miles from mine and the bracing cold would sober me up a little. I set off towards the woods that separated her house from mine. Every time I walk those familiar trails, I always feel like I should be scattering breadcrumbs behind me. My grandmother's house lies sheltered in the woods and they always feel so dense and foreboding whenever I have to walk through them. The snow when the cold made them quiet, the birds having left and many of the animals asleep for the winter, but the tracks told me that there were, indeed, things out here. My legs started to get tired almost at once. If you've never had to slog through deep snow, then I can tell you that it isn't much fun. The sun was going down and I began to regret not taking the truck. I could hear the snow making the trees crack and sag and now and again, there was a scurry of movement as some small creatures. Other than the occasional noise, it was as though I had the forest to myself and my loud footsteps made me feel like the last person on earth. When I heard the snow crunch nearby, I swung to see what was there. The sound had startled me. My own feet were the only thing making much noise out there, but I found nothing that could have made the noise. By the sound of the crunch, I would have thought it was a reindeer or maybe a clumsy squirrel who'd fallen from a tree. In the dim light, I couldn't even see if there were prints and I started slogging a little faster, worried it might be a wolf or something. The crunching came again, but I shrugged it off as my mind playing tricks. When it crunched again, closer this time, I started moving even faster. Going too fast would be a great way to break an ankle or fall and impale myself on a tree limb, but the crunching and lack of a source was starting to freak me out. The snowing sky was already overcast and the sun was setting behind them. The thought of being out here after dark made my skin crawl and the thought of getting lost in a stretch of woods that would become nearly unnavigable once the sun went down made me quicken my pace again. My footsteps were loud, cutting through the silence like a foghorn, but somehow I could still hear the steps behind me as I nearly jogged through the ankle deep snow. What I had thought might be a reindeer or a wolf now sounded like something much larger. It was very rare, but polar bears sometimes got stuck on ice floes and found their way here. I'd seen something about it online, I thought, and I could see a big hungry polar bear lapping along behind me as it prepared to make a quick meal out of me. I didn't dare look back as I heard the crunch come down not eight feet behind me. It hit the ground hard enough to dislodge snow from the trees and I started looking at it as best I could. What the hell was it? Iceland didn't have a lot of large predators, none that came this close to settled areas and my mind began to travel back to a time when I was young and sitting warm around my grandmother's fire. My cousins and I had always loved the stories of trolls and elves, great heroes who slew the former and were aided by the latter, and we always took up sticks when we played and pretended to swing mighty swords at the knees of ugly, hulking trolls. The idea of being devoured by a large and slavering troll, my mind showing me the one from Harry Potter seemed less fun now that I was being chased by one in a fairytale forest. I glanced behind me in a blind panic, not wanting to see, but wanting to know nonetheless, and felt my boot sink into a hole. I went down, face first in the snow and nearly head first into a tree and rolled over to face whatever was now surely going to get me. My ancestors had been the men who settled this land, men who rode onto these shores in boats with axes entamed this wilderness, and I would be damned if I would die with my head in the snow like a blubbering baby. What I saw looming over me was no troll. What I saw looming over me was much worse. When I had drawn him, I'd made his legs long and wavy like noodles. I'd drawn him with a tabby catcoat and a pair of big, friendly yellow eyes. He'd been given the Cheshire Cat's grin and a pair of pointy ears that made him look a little like Batman. He'd looked friendly, goofy, something a child couldn't possibly be afraid of. The yule cat, for that, was the only thing it could be, was none of these things. His coat was black as twice-baked charcoal, and his bones and muscles seemed to shift beneath it like there might be something living just under its skin. Its legs were long and powerful, like a panther or a jaguar, and its paws left tracks as big as hubcaps with claws like stilettos. His mouth was filled with two big teeth, and the tip seemed to poke at its lips painfully as its slather ran pink. Its ears had been mostly chewed off, sitting on its head like rounded nubs that barely seemed big enough to be ears at all. Its eyes, though, were the worst. Its yellow eyes blazed like torches, their centers crackling red, and when it loosed a long, loud yowl, I felt my snow pants turn warm. I was saved by dumb luck. Its yowl had loose some snow from the tree over my head, and when it fell, it coated the yule cat's face in a cold blanket of surprise. I rolled away, and when I did, the beast lunged at me and ran smack into the tree I had nearly fallen into. It yowled again, angrily, and its claws sounded as if they were shredding the tree to pieces. I couldn't tell if they did or didn't. I was running through the snow like a reindeer, turning it up as my fear gave me a new purpose. I could see the smoke from Grandma's chimney, but I knew I had to be another quarter mile from the house. The shadows were gathering, and I knew that I was dead as soon as this thing got its bearings. When it came after me, I realized it had been playing with me before. Its crunching steps sounded dinosauric, and it cleared the distance between us easily. It swiped at me as I ran, and the claws slid easily through my thick jacket. My back suddenly felt cold as the goose down spilled out of it, and I began to realize I was running on borrowed time. I had to find some way to lose it. I had to find some way to use its size against it. I needed a place to hide and catch my breath, my lungs burning, and my head swimming with exertion. That's when I realized where I was. When we were children, there was a tall tree that we used as a landmark. We called it the Himmel Tree, the Sky Tree, because it always seemed like it soared up into the clouds. My older cousins and I had hiked to the tree once, nearly a quarter mile into the woods, and found that the tree lived up to its name. It was massive, 60 feet of wood like iron, and beneath it was a series of roots that looked like a cage. The soil had pulled away from them, and as kids, we would crawl beneath the tree and camp in relative comfort. The spot was large for children, but would be snug for me. I was hoping that it would be too snug for this hellcat as well. I booked it, running flat out as the tree soured up to greet me. I jumped over a sprawl of fallen trees, something I remembered from childhood, and prayed that maybe the cat wouldn't be so lucky. When I heard him hiss and stumble a moment later, I knew that luck was with me. I didn't look to see how badly he had spilled. I fell on my belly and prayed I had the angle right as I slid between the roots of the huge tree. I thumped my shoulder, the tough roots hurting as I hit them, but I made it mostly under as the cat scrambled after me. I winced as his claws caught my leg, ripping through snow pants and jeans to sink its meat. But I shook him off before he could pull me out, and I was soon snug beneath the woody canopy of the huge old tree. The underside was just as I remembered it. It was damp from snow run, but the frozen snow had mostly covered it. So I was left in a crystalline world domed by white. The cat screamed in agony, shooting a paw between the roots and searching for me in frustration. I huddled against the side of the tree, not wanting to be found by those furtive claws, and stayed as still and quiet as I could. The scrambling went on for what seemed like hours until finally the cat removed its sooty paw, and I heard it crunching off into the forest. I stayed still, fearing some trick, but it went right on moving until its heavy footsteps were only slight crunches in the distance. I stayed put though, blowing on my hands as my wet pants and bleeding leg began to make me shiver. I would freeze to death out here if I stayed too long, but I was afraid that the yule cat might double back and wait for me to leave. I shivered for as long as I could, feeling the temperature drop as the sun crept closer to down, and finally I decided I'd rather be eaten than freeze to death. I crawled out, and when I wasn't immediately set upon, I started stumbling towards my grandmother's house. She was waiting in the doorway for me, a mug of spice cider in her hand, and a concerned grimace for my many injuries. He found you out there, didn't he? It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway. I've been sitting by the fire and letting her feed me and nurse me for the last few hours. She bandaged my leg and took my shredded clothes away. She set a plate of food in front of me, and when I finished the spice cider, she brought me tea and told me to rest. Before she went back to her room to sleep, she dropped a package in my lap. It was a new sheepskin coat, lovely to see and soft to touch. I couldn't imagine what it had cost her, though I knew what it had almost cost me. He won't bother you now, she said, and made her way to bed as I sat convulsing by the fire. So, heed your elders when they tell you the old stories. I was lucky, but you can't always count on luck. The yule cat still lurks in the hills and woods, searching for those he deems ungrateful and underdressed. Don't take the clothes you get for Christmas so lightly because they could save your life if you find yourself in the sights of the yule cat.