Stardust

The star threw her hair back, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. And then, opening her eyes, once again self-possessed, she said, “Perhaps there’s a magic word or something.”

“I don’t know any magic words,” said Tristran. He held the chain up. It glittered red and purple in the light of the setting sun. “Please?” he said. There was a ripple in the fabric of the chain, and he slid his hand out of it.

“Here you go,” he said, passing the star the other end of the chain that had bound her. “I’ll try not to be too long. And if any of the fair folk sing their silly songs at you, for heaven’s sake, don’t throw your crutch at them. They’ll only steal it.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“I’ll have to trust you, on your honor as a star, not to run away,” he said.

She touched her splinted leg. “I will do no running for quite some time,” she said, pointedly. And with that Tristran had to content himself.

He walked the last half a mile into the village. It had no inn, being far off the beaten track for travelers, but the portly old woman who explained this to him then insisted he accompany her to her cottage, where she pressed upon him a wooden bowlful of barley porridge with carrots in it, and a mug of small beer. He exchanged his cambric handkerchief for a bottle of elderflower cordial, a round of green cheese and a number of unfamiliar fruits: they were soft and fuzzy, like apricots, but were the purple-blue of grapes, and they smelled a little like ripe pears; also the woman gave him a small bale of hay, for the unicorn.

He walked back to the meadow where he had left them, munching on a piece of the fruit, which was juicy, and chewy and quite sweet. He wondered if the star would like to try one,

whether she would like it if she did. He hoped that she would be pleased with what he had brought her.

At first, Tristran thought that he must have made a mistake, and that he had lost his way in the moonlight. No: that was the same oak tree, the one beneath which the star had been sitting.

“Hello?” he called. Glow-worms and fireflies glittered green and yellow in the hedgerows and in the branches of trees. There came no reply, and Tristran felt a sick, stupid feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Hello?” he called. He stopped calling, then, because there was no one to answer.

He dropped the bale of hay, and then he kicked it.

She was to the southwest of him, moving faster than he could walk. He followed after her in the bright moonlight. Inside, he felt numbed and foolish; stung by a pang of guilt and shame and regret. He should not have loosed her chain, he should have tied it to a tree; he should have forced the star to go with him into the village. This went through his head as he walked; but another voice spoke to him also, pointing out that if he had not unchained her then, he would have done it sometime soon, and she would have run from him then.

He wondered if he would ever see the star again, and he stumbled over roots as the way led him between old trees, into the deep woods. The moonlight slowly vanished beneath the thick canopy of leaves, and after stumbling vainly in the dark for a short while, he laid himself down beneath a tree, rested his head on his bag, and closed his eyes, and felt sorry for himself until he fell asleep.

On a rocky mountain pass, on the southernmost slopes of Mount Belly, the witch-queen reined in her goat-drawn chariot and stopped and sniffed the chilly air.

The myriad stars hung cold in the sky above her.

Her red, red lips curved up into a smile of such beauty, such brilliance, such pure and perfect happiness that it would have frozen your blood in your veins to have seen it. “There,” she said. “She is coming to me.”

And the wind of the mountain pass howled about her triumphantly, as if in answer.

Primus sat beside the embers of his fire and he shivered beneath his thick black robe. One of the black stallions, waking or dreaming, whinnied and snorted, and then rested once more. Primus’s face felt strangely cold; he missed his thick beard. With a stick he pushed a clay ball from the embers. He spat on his hands, then he split open the hot clay and smelled the sweet flesh of the hedgehog, which had cooked, slowly, in the embers, as he had slept.

He ate his breakfast meticulously, spitting the tiny bones into the fire circle once he had chewed the meat from them.

He washed the hedgehog down with a lump of hard cheese and a slightly vinegary white wine.

Once he had eaten, he wiped his hands upon his robe and then he cast the runes to find the topaz stone which conferred the lordship of the crag towns and the vast estates of the Stormhold. He cast them, then he stared, puzzled, at the small, square, red granite tiles. He picked them up once more, shook them in his long-fingered hands, dropped them onto the ground and stared at them again. Then Primus spat into the embers, which hissed lazily. He swept the tiles up and dropped them into the pouch at his belt.

“It is moving faster, further,” said Primus to himself.