Stardust

Then Victoria called over a respectable gentleman, greying at the temples, who was smoking a black cheroot and who grinned as if he had the toothache. "And this is Robert," she said. "Robert, this is Yvaine. She's waiting for her young man. Yvaine, this is Robert Monday. And on Friday next, at midday, I shall be Victoria Monday. Perhaps you could make something of that, my dear, in your speech at the wedding breakfast—that on Friday there will be two Mondays together!"

And Mr. Monday puffed on his cheroot, and told his bride-to-be that he would certainly consider it.

"Then," asked Yvaine, picking her words with care, "you are not marrying Tristran Thorn?"

"No," said Victoria.

"Oh," said the star. "Good." And she sat down again.

She was still sitting there when Tristran came back through the gap in the wall, several hours later. He looked distracted, but brightened up when he saw her. "Hello, you," he said, helping her to her feet. "Have a good time waiting for me?"

"Not particularly," she said.

"I'm sorry," said Tristran. "I suppose I should have taken you with me, into the village."

"No," said the star, "You shouldn't have. I live as long as I am in Faerie. Were I to travel to your world, I would be nothing but a cold iron stone fallen from the heavens, pitted and pocked."

"But I almost took you through with me!" said Tristan, aghast. "I tried to, last night."

"Yes," she said. "Which only goes to prove that you are indeed a ninny, a lackwit, and a... a clodpoll."

"Dunderhead," offered Tristran. "You always used to like calling me a dunderhead. And an oaf."

"Well," she said, "you are all those things, and more besides. Why did you keep me waiting like that? I thought something terrible had happened to you."

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I won't leave you again."

"No," she said, seriously and with certainty, "you will not."

His hand found hers, then. They walked, hand in hand, through the market. A wind began to come up, flapping and gusting at the canvas of the tents and the flags, and a cold rain spat down on them. They took refuge under the awning of a book stall, along with a number of other people and creatures. The stallholder hauled a boxful of books further under the canvas, to ensure that it did not get wet.

"Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, not long wet nor not long dry," said a man in a black silk top hat to Tristran and Yvaine. He was purchasing a small book bound in red leather from the bookseller.

Tristran smiled and nodded, and, as it became apparent that the rain was easing up, he and Yvaine walked on.

"Which is all the thanks I shall ever get from them, I'll wager," said the tall man in the top hat to the bookseller, who had not the slightest idea what he was speaking about, and did not care.

"I have said my good-byes to my family," said Tristran to the star, as they walked. "To my father, and my mother—my father's wife, perhaps I should say—and to my sister, Louisa. I don't think I shall be going back again. Now we just need to solve the problem of how to put you back up again in the sky. Perhaps I shall come with you."

"You would not like it, up in the sky," the star assured him. "So... I take it you will not be marrying Victoria Forester."

Tristran nodded. "No," he said.

"I met her," said the star. "Did you know that she is with child?"

"What?" asked Tristran, shocked and surprised.

"I doubt that she knows. She is one, perhaps two moons along."

"Good lord. How do you know?"

It was the star's turn to shrug. "You know," she said, "I was happy to discover that you are not marrying Victoria Forester."

"So was I," he confessed.

The rain began once more, but they made no move to get under cover. He squeezed her hand in his. "You know," she said, "a star and a mortal man..."

"Only half mortal, actually," said Tristran, helpfully. "Everything I ever thought about myself— who I was, what I am— was a lie. Or sort of. You have no idea how astonishingly liberating that feels."

"Whatever you are," she said, "I just wanted to point out that we can probably never have children. That's all."

Tristran looked at the star, then, and he began to smile, and he said nothing at all. His hands were on her upper arms. He was standing in front of her, and looking down at her.

"Just so you know, that's all," said the star, and she leaned forward.

They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it were not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.

The silver chain was now nothing but smoke and vapor. For a heartbeat it hung on the air, then a sharp gust of wind and rain blew it out into nothing at all.

"There," said the woman with the dark, curling hair, stretching like a cat, and smiling. "The terms of my servitude are fulfilled, and now you and I are done with each other."