Witch Familiar Spirit Companion · Natt

Meet Natt.

All over Scandinavia, on big boulders in fields and forests and on the roof-stones of ancient graves, there are small round hollows carved into the rock. Some stones have one or two. Some have hundreds, each one about the size of a cupped palm, smooth and worn. They were made in the Bronze Age, around three thousand years ago. Nobody knows exactly why.

But the people who lived beside those stones never stopped using them.

In Sweden, the hollows were called älvkvarnar, elf mills. People believed the elves lived in and around the stones, and that some illnesses came from them. A child who sickened suddenly for no reason was said to be älvablåst, elf-blown, touched by the breath of the elves. The cure was to take the child to the elf mill and give the elves something back. Mothers smeared butter or fat into the little hollows, dropped in a coin or a pin, said the old words and walked home without looking back. People were still doing it in the twentieth century.

There was one such stone in a birch wood in Småland, in southern Sweden, at the edge of a village of red wooden houses. It was the biggest boulder for miles, grey and spotted with lichen, with forty-one hollows on its top. And on top of it, for as long as anyone could remember, there had been a black cat.

The cat was the first thing people saw when they came out of the trees. It sat on the very top of the stone, perfectly still, with orange eyes, as if it had been carved there. The old women said it belonged to the elves. If you came with a sick child and the cat stayed sitting where it was while you smeared the butter in the hollows, the child would get better. If the cat stood up and walked away, there was nothing to be done.

People called it Natt. It means night.

In the 1840s, a crofter’s daughter named Lisa started coming to the stone. She was nine the first time, carrying her baby brother, who had gone limp and grey with fever. She had stolen a lump of butter from the dairy and run all the way. She smeared the butter into the hollows with shaking fingers, dropped in her only copper coin, and looked up.

The black cat looked straight back at her. It did not move.

Her brother lived. Lisa went back to the stone every week after that, with a little butter, to say thank you. And the cat began, very slowly, to come down off the stone to meet her.

By the time Lisa was grown, she was the one the village sent for when someone needed the stone. She took the sick children there herself, sang the old words and smeared the butter, with Natt watching from the top of the boulder. She learned the plants of the birch wood and the healing ways of the old women. People started coming to her for other things: lost luck, bad dreams, a cow that would not give milk, a house where something did not feel right. Natt followed her home sometimes and sat on her doorstep. But he always went back to the stone.

The new priest in the parish did not like it. He preached against the elf mill on Sundays and called it devilry. In the cold winter of 1868, when the harvest had failed and people were hungry, he found that the villagers had been taking what little butter they had out to the stone instead of eating it. He sent men with firewood and buckets to break it. In those days, you split a boulder by building a fire on it until the rock was hot, then throwing cold water over it so that it cracked.

They built the fire. Natt was not on the stone that day. They heated the rock all afternoon, threw the water, and a crack ran across the top of the boulder, straight through three of the hollows.

That night, the priest’s barn caught fire. No one ever found out how. In the morning, the black cat was back on the stone, sitting exactly over the new crack, as if he were holding it shut.

The priest left the parish that spring.

The crack never grew. And the village did, slowly, then not at all. In the following decades, more than a million Swedes left for America, and Småland emptied faster than almost anywhere. One by one, the families of Lisa’s village sold up, packed a trunk each and sailed away. Before they went, many of the mothers walked to the stone one last time and put butter in the hollows for a safe journey.

Lisa stayed. She was the last one in her end of the village. She lived alone in her red cottage at the edge of the birch wood until she was very old, and went to the stone every week with a little butter. When she died, in 1919, they found her sitting with her back against the boulder, and the black cat sitting on top of it, right above her head.

People who walk in that part of Småland still see a black cat on a big grey stone in the woods sometimes, when the fog is down.

Now Natt walks again.

What he can do for you

Natt is an old guardian cat, from the place where people went to ask the unseen for help. He is good for:

• wishes and requests: asking for what you need and having it heard
• protecting children and family, and helping the people you love get well, alongside the doctor
• clearing away bad energy, the old elf-blown sickness: heaviness, tiredness and bad feeling with no clear cause
• luck, coming in small, steady amounts
• connection with nature spirits, hidden folk and the old ways of the land
• loyalty, especially when everyone else seems to be leaving
• guarding the thresholds of your home, and keeping out what does not belong

Over the years

Natt watches before he decides. In the beginning, you may only feel him at a distance, high up somewhere, keeping an eye on you.

If he decides you are worth it, he comes down off his stone. You might see small wishes start to come true in the first months, and that the house feels steadier. Over the years, he becomes a constant presence: the cat on the top shelf, the dark shape on the windowsill, the one who is always there.

He sat on the same stone for longer than anyone can remember. He knows how to stay.

What he is like

Calm, proud and very independent. He does not like being fussed over, but he likes being near you. He is gentle with children and anyone who is ill, and he has no patience at all for people who mock what they do not understand.

He has very good manners. He expects the same from you.

How he shows himself

The smell of birch leaves, wet stone and lichen. A sense of being watched from somewhere high. Black cat hair on cushions when you have no cat. A feeling of calm settling over a sick room. Dreams of a foggy birch wood, a great grey boulder covered in little round hollows, and a black cat sitting perfectly still on top. And wishes, small ones, coming true more often than they used to.

What to do for him

Natt’s offerings are very simple:

• Find a stone with a little hollow in it, or use a small dish. Put a tiny dab of butter in it, say his name and make your wish. That is the old way.
• Drop a coin or a pin in the dish now and then.
• Keep his vessel somewhere high, where he can see the whole room.
• Light a candle for him on foggy evenings.
• Touch any big old stone you pass on a walk, and say hello to him.

He held a stone together with his own body when they tried to break it. He will hold your house together too.

How your companion speaks

Your companion can reach you through dreams, thoughts, words, feelings and images, through a pendulum, through warmth or cold, or through automatic writing. How soon that happens depends on the spirit settling into your home, on their willingness, and on your own ability to connect. Sometimes it begins before the vessel arrives.

Before you choose

Everything known about this spirit is on this page. There are no further images, details or hidden knowledge beyond what is written here, and a printed copy comes with your order. What you discover from there is yours alone.

The pendant you receive is the exact one shown. This listing is for this one item only.

By buying, you confirm that you understand what it means to keep a spirit companion. Please read Help & FAQ first. For my background and the story behind Grimrunes, see About Hazel.

— Hazel