A quar­tet of rough hands raised fists of wine. Dots of light swam in the cher­ry liq­uid, glit­tered in crys­tal bowls. “Cheers!” said four voic­es, thumped the table with as many fists.

“And a warm, fat Hal­lowtide to all of us,” said the head of the table, a shag­gy lass with white-streaked hair. There was a cho­rus of hear, hear, a bur­ble of gulped wine.

Beside the lass, a mouse in leather reached for a hunk of nut bread. “I will cer­tain­ly become fat if we come here any more often,” he said, spit­ting crumbs. The oth­ers chor­tled, admired their sur­round­ings.

The table resided with­in a sump­tu­ous par­lor, all vel­vet, gaslights, and pan­eled wood. Servers wavered about, fer­ried drinks to and fro. A sound of harp­si­chord thrummed near­by, near­ly drowned out by the bois­ter­ous cut­ters.

“This is the beau monde, friends,” said a weird crea­ture beside Stoat. Naught but her lips and green, blood­shot eyes showed under lay­ers of woven silk.

“Damn true, Lilé” said a swarthy man with a scarred nose. “One thou­sand pounds!” he declared, smil­ing. The table cheered, raised their cups again. “Bless Stoat for find­ing the cat­a­comb job.”

The lass with the odd hair bowed exag­ger­at­ed­ly. “Please, Gar,” she said, show­ing crooked teeth. “The mag­is­trate was infat­u­at­ed with me. Would’ve payed us a hun­dred crowns just to sweep the stairs, if he thought I’d like it.”

“Poor bug­ger,” said the mouse, teeth work­ing at a bis­cuit. “Would break his heart to hear you’re queer.”

“Yeah,” grinned Stoat, pecked the silk-wrapped girl on her swad­dled cheek. Lilé shoved her, grinned back.

The mouse twitched his ears. “If you two would pause your fondling, I believe I hear the cheese.”

Eight eyes were drawn to a pair of approach­ing wait­ers in black ties. One car­ried a wrig­gling white sack. The oth­er; a paper-cov­ered stool and a short, wood­en bat. The fel­low with the sack approached Stoat. He bowed briefly, placed it on the stool which his cowork­er had set down. With quick hands, he lift­ed the cor­ners of the cloth. A blue-spot­ted lump rolled out, wrig­gled atop the paper.

“Madame,” said the wait­er, indi­cat­ing the lump. He kept it from wrig­gling off with a firm hand. “Very good,” said Stoat, frown­ing as if impressed. The mouse rolled his red eyes at her.

The wait­er nod­ded, took the bat from his col­league. He pursed his lips, sharply thumped the lump thrice. He paused momen­tar­i­ly, observed a wig­gle, thumped it once more.

“Madame,” he said again, bow­ing. Eight hands clapped soft­ly, hun­gri­ly. The wait­ers gath­ered their stool and bat. They bowed again, depart­ed. 

Stoat looked to her friends, raised her glass again. “Le beau monde!”

* * *

Long have peo­ple dined on mold. Cer­tain molds, known as cur­dles, nat­u­ral­ly infest the udders of cows, fleeces, and oth­er such quadrupeds. Ancient Lit­torans, cun­ning and hun­gry as they are, some­how learned the con­tents of such a hard­ened, wig­gling udder to be deli­cious. Now, thou­sands, of years lat­er, the cul­tur­ing of cur­dles has become a prac­ti­cal art. Vats of milk are allowed to come alive. Then they are killed, becom­ing, deli­cious­ly, cheese.

The best cheeses come from Faindun and Geselchundt. They graze on bowls of the finest milk, are allowed to pas­ture freely in the dry caves and cel­lars in which they are raised. 

A soft cheese is kept for only a short while before being sold, where­as a sharp, hard cheese is allowed to grow old and seden­tary over a peri­od of many months. 

In the end, it is the hard cheeses which are eas­i­er to pre­pare for mar­ket. The young, soft ones are hard to catch, and are dif­fi­cult to club to death. Club­bing * is the accept­ed method of end­ing a cheese’s life on the pas­ture, and is thought to con­tribute to its tex­ture. 

In Empereaux, it is tra­di­tion­al to club the cheese imme­di­ate­ly before prepa­ra­tion, to ensure absolute fresh­ness. This is done before the din­ner table, so that guests may be sure of their host’s respect and good taste. The phrase “for­got to club the cheese” is used when describ­ing an indi­vid­ual who has com­mit­ted a very obvi­ous faux pas upon enter­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

Many vari­eties of cheese exist, depend great­ly on coun­try and milk of ori­gin.

• Boque­fort is a spot­ty, blue cheese. It is soft, allowed to hop about in monastery runs, where it is tra­di­tion­al­ly pas­tured by Emper­oussin monks. There, it grows deli­cious and musty on a diet of fleece milk (and the occa­sion­al monk.)
• Goat is made, as one might expect, from the milk of fat Emper­oussin goats (they call it chevre.) Per the pref­er­ence of the island peo­ple, it is a soft cheese, remain­ing very mobile up until serv­ing. It is made fresh, kept in sacks for only a few days before eat­ing. These sacks are hung from the ceil­ings of kitchens, may thump about dur­ing the night.
• Zaleg­gio is kept by the hearty cheese­mon­gers of Maples. It is a round, fat mass which smells high­ly of feet. It is washed every day by the cheese­mon­gers, who slap it excit­ed­ly to pro­mote good tex­ture.
• Bufala is a young, soft cheese fed on the milk of Alagóri­an buf­fa­lo. It is kept in vats of brine, fed a trick­le of milk. When ready for serv­ing, it is scooped up in great strings, rolled into fist sized balls, and smacked on a table until dead.
• Ched­dar is kept by the Firl­ish in dry caves. When young, ched­dar is unde­sir­able, but becomes flaky and delec­table with age. It is pressed into wheels as it becomes old and immo­bile, even­tu­al­ly solid­i­fy­ing into an eas­i­ly-blud­geoned wheel.

“A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. ”

― James Joyce