Stardust

The unicorn slowed, and stopped. The star looked down at him. Then she made a face, and shook her head. "You had better come up here, too," she said. "If the unicorn will let you. Otherwise you'll just faint or something, and drag me onto the ground with you. And we need to go somewhere so that you can get food."

Tristran nodded, gratefully.

The unicorn appeared to offer no opposition, waiting, passively, so Tristran attempted to clamber up onto it. It was like climbing a sheer wall, and as fruitless. Eventually Tristran led the animal over to a beech tree that had been uprooted several years before by a storm, or a high wind, or an irritable giant, and, holding his bag and the star's crutch, he scrambled up the roots onto the trunk, and from there onto the back of the unicorn.

"There is a village on the other side of that hill," said Tristran. "I expect that we can find something to eat when we get there." He patted the unicorn's flanks with his free hand. The beast began to walk. Tristran moved his hand to the star's waist, to steady himself. He could feel the silken texture of her thin dress, and beneath that, the thick chain of the topaz about her waist.

Riding a unicorn was not like riding a horse: it did not move like a horse; it was a wilder ride, and a stranger one. The unicorn waited until Tristran and the star were comfortable upon its back, and then, slowly and easily, it began to put on speed.

The trees surged and leapt past them. The star leaned forward, her fingers tangled into the unicorn's mane; Tristran—his hunger forgotten in his fear—gripped the sides of the unicorn with his knees, and simply prayed that he would not be knocked to the ground by a stray branch. Soon he found he was beginning to enjoy the experience. There is something about riding a unicorn, for those people who still can, which is unlike any other experience: exhilarating and intoxicating and fine.

The sun was setting when they reached the outskirts of the village. In a rolling meadow, beneath an oak tree, the unicorn came to a skittish halt and would go no further. Tristran dismounted, and landed with a bump on the grass of the meadow. His rump felt sore, but, with the star looking down at him, uncomplaining, he dared not rub it.

"Are you hungry?" he asked the star.

She said nothing.

"Look," he said, "I'm starving. Perfectly famished. I don't know if you—if stars—eat, or what they eat. But I won't have you starving yourself." He looked up at her, questioning. She stared down at him, first impassively, then, in a trice, her blue eyes filled with tears. She raised a hand to her face and wiped away the tears, leaving a smudge of mud on her cheeks.

"We eat only darkness," she said, "and we drink only light. So I'm nuh-not hungry. I'm lonely and scared and cold and muh-miserable and cuh-captured but I'm nuh-not hungry."

"Don't cry," said Tristran. "Look, I'll go into the village and get some food. You just wait here. The unicorn will protect you, if anyone comes." He reached up and gently lifted her down from the unicorn's back. The unicorn shook its mane, then began to crop the grass of the meadow, contentedly.

The star sniffed, "Wait here?" she asked, holding up the chain that joined them.

"Oh," said Tristran. "Give me your hand."

She reached her hand out to him. He fumbled with the chain to undo it, but it would not undo. "Hmm," said Tristran. He tugged at the chain around his own wrist, but it, too, held fast. "It looks," he said, "as if I'm as tied to you as you are to me."

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.