Stardust

"But," said Tristran, "I would pay you."

The harridan cackled with scorn. "There's never a thing you could possess that I would take for your passage. Now, if you'll not work for me at the market at Wall, then be off with you."

Tristran reached up to the buttonhole of his jerkin, and felt it there, as cold and perfect as it had been through all his journeyings. He pulled it out, and held it up to the old woman between finger and thumb. "You sell glass flowers, you say," he said. "Would you be interested in this one?"

It was a snowdrop made of green glass and white glass, cunningly fashioned: it seemed as if it had been plucked from the meadow grass that very morning, and the dew was still upon it. The old woman squinted at it for a heartbeat, looking at its green leaves and its tight white petals, then she let out a screech: it might have been the anguished cry of some bereft bird of prey. "Where did you get that?" she cried. "Give it to me! Give it to me this instant!"

Tristran closed his finger about the snowdrop, concealing it from view, and he took a couple of steps backwards. "Hmm," he said aloud. "It occurs to me now that I have a deep fondness for this flower, which was a gift from my father when I commenced my travels, and which, I suspect, carries with it a tremendous personal and familial importance. Certainly it has brought me luck, of one kind or another. Perhaps I would be better off keeping the flower, and my companion and I can walk to Wall."

Madame Semele seemed torn between her desire to threaten and to cajole, and the emotions chased each other so nakedly across her face that she seemed almost to vibrate with the effort of keeping them in check. And then she took herself in hand and said, in a voice that cracked with self-control, "Now, now. No need to be hasty. I am certain that a deal can be struck between us."

"Oh," said Tristran, "I doubt it. It would need to be a very fine deal, to interest me, and it would need certain guarantees of safe-conduct and such safeguards as to assure that your behavior and actions toward me and my companion remained at all times benign."

"Let me see the snowdrop again," pleaded the old woman.

The bright-colored bird, its silver chain about one leg, fluttered out of the open door of the caravan, and gazed down at the proceedings beneath.

"The poor thing," said Yvaine, "chained up like that. Why do you not set her free?"

But the old woman did not answer her, ignoring her, or so Tristran thought, and said, "I will transport you to Wall, and I swear upon my honor and upon my true name that I will take no action to harm you upon the journey."

"Or by inaction, or indirect action, allow harm to come to me or my companion."

"As you say."

Tristran thought for a moment. He certainly did not trust the old woman. "I wish you to swear that we shall arrive in Wall in the same manner and condition and state that we are in now, and that you will give us board and lodging upon the way."

The old woman clucked, then nodded. She clambered down from the caravan once more, and hawked, then spat into the dust. She pointed to the glob of spittle. "Now you," she said. Tristran spat next to it. With her foot she rubbed both wet patches, so they conjoined. "There," she said. "A bargain's a bargain. Give me the flower."

The greed and hunger were so obvious in her face that Tristran was now certain he could have made a better deal, but he gave the old woman his father's flower. As she took it from him, her face broke into a gap-toothed grin. "Why, I do think that this is the superior of the one that damnable child gave away almost twenty years gone. Now, tell me young man," she asked, looking up at Tristran with her sharp old eyes, "do you know what manner of thing you have been wearing in your buttonhole?"

"It is a flower. A glass flower."

The old woman laughed so hard and so suddenly that Tristran thought that she was choking. "It is a frozen charm," she said. "A thing of power. Something like this can perform wonders and miracles in the right hands. Watch." She held the snowdrop above her head then brought it slowly down, so it brushed Tristran's forehead.

For but a heartbeat he felt most peculiar, as if thick, black treacle were running through his veins in place of blood; then the shape of the world changed. Everything became huge and towering. It seemed as if the old woman herself was now a giantess, and his vision was blurred and confused.

Two huge hands came down and picked him up, gently. "'Tain't the biggest of caravans," said Madame Semele, her voice a low, slow liquid boom. "And I shall keep to the letter of my oath, for you shall not be harmed, and you shall be boarded and lodged on your journey to Wall." And then she dropped the dormouse into the pocket of her apron and she clambered onto the caravan.