Stardust

“Let us make for the clearing,” she said, and they pushed through the thicket as best they could. It still took them the better part of an hour to reach the clearing, but the ground, when they got there, was as level and flat as a playing field. The space seemed to have been cleared with a purpose, but what that purpose was Tristran could not imagine.

In the center of the glade, on the grass some distance from them, was an ornate golden crown, which glittered in the afternoon sunlight. It was studded with red and blue stones: rubies and sapphires, thought Tristran. He was about to walk over to the crown when the star touched his arm and said, “Wait. Do you hear drums?”

He realized that he did: a low, throbbing beat, coming from all around them, near at hand and far away, which echoed through the hills. And then there came a loud crashing noise from the trees at the far side of the clearing, and a high, wordless screaming. Into the glade came a huge white horse, its flanks gashed and bloody. It charged into the middle of the clearing, and then it turned, and lowered its head, and faced its pursuer—which bounded into the clearing with a growl that made Tristran’s flesh prickle. It was a lion, but it looked little enough like the lion Tristran had seen at a fair in the next village, which had been a mangy, toothless, rheumy thing. This lion was huge, the color of sand in the late afternoon. It entered the clearing at a run, and then it stopped, and snarled at the white horse.

The horse looked terrified. Its mane was matted with sweat and blood, and its eyes were wild. Also, Tristran realized, it had a long, ivory horn jutting from the center of its forehead. It reared up on its hind legs, whinnying and snorting, and one sharp, unshod hoof connected with the lion’s shoulder, causing the lion to howl like a huge, scalded cat, and to spring backwards. Then, keeping its distance, the lion circled the wary unicorn, its golden eyes at all times fixed upon the sharp horn that was always turned toward it.

“Stop them,” whispered the star. “They will kill each other.”

The lion growled at the unicorn. It began as a soft growl, like distant thunder, and finished as a roar that shook the trees and the rocks of the valley and the sky. Then the lion sprang and the unicorn plunged, and the glade was filled with gold and silver and red, for the lion was on the unicorn’s back, claws gashing deeply into its flanks, mouth at its neck, and the unicorn was wailing and bucking and throwing itself onto its back in an effort to dislodge the great cat, flailing uselessly with its hooves and its horn in an effort to reach its tormentor.

“Please, do something. The lion will kill him,” pleaded the girl, urgently.

Tristran would have explained to her that all he could possibly hope for if he approached the raging beasts was to be skewered, and kicked, and clawed, and eaten; and he would further have explained that, should he somehow survive approaching them, there was still nothing that he could do, having with him not even the pail of water which had been the traditional method of breaking up animal fights in Wall. But by the time all these thoughts had gone through his head, Tristran was already standing in the center of the clearing, an arm’s length from the beasts. The scent of the lion was deep, animal, terrifying, and Tristran was close enough to see the beseeching expression in the unicorn’s black eyes...

The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown, thought Tristran to himself, remembering the old nursery rhyme.

The Lion beat the Unicom all about the town.

He beat him once

He beat him twice

With all his might and main

He beat him three times over

His power to maintain

And with that, he picked up the crown from the grass; it was as heavy and as soft as lead. He walked toward the animals, talking to the lion as he had talked to the ill-tempered rams and agitated ewes in his father’s fields, saying “Here, now... Easy... Here’s your crown...”

The lion shook the unicorn in its jaws, like a cat worrying a woolen scarf, and darted a look of pure puzzlement at Tristran.

“Hullo,” said Tristran. There were burrs and leaves in the lion’s mane. He held the heavy crown out toward the great beast. “You won. Let the unicorn go.” And he took a step closer. Then he reached out both trembling hands, and placed the crown upon the lion’s head.

The lion clambered off the prone body of the unicorn and began to pad, silently, about the clearing, its head raised high. It reached the edge of the wood, where it paused for several minutes to lick its wounds with its red, red tongue, and then, purring like an earthquake, the lion slipped away into the forest.