Stardust

She placed a hundred burning kisses on his face and chest, and then she was above him, straddling him, gasping and laughing, sweating and slippery as a minnow, and he was arching and pushing and exulting, his head full of her and only her, and had he known her name he would have called it out aloud.

At the end, he would have pulled out, but she held him inside her, wrapped her legs around him, pushed against him so hard that he felt that the two of them occupied the same place in the universe. As if, for one powerful, engulfing moment, they were the same person, giving and receiving, as the stars faded into the predawn sky.

They lay together, side by side.

The faerie woman adjusted her silk robe and was once more decorously covered. Dunstan pulled his britches back up, with regret. He squeezed her small hand in his.

The sweat dried on his skin, and he felt chilled and lonely.

He could see her now, as the sky lightened into a dawn grey. Around them animals were stirring: horses stamped, birds began, waking, to sing the dawn in, and here and there across the market meadow, those in the tents were beginning to rise and move. "Now, get along with you," she said softly, and looked at him, half regretfully, with eyes as violet as the cirrus clouds, high in the dawn sky. And she kissed him, gently, on the mouth, with lips that tasted of crushed blackberries, then she stood up and walked back into the gypsy caravan behind the stall.

Dazed and alone, Dunstan walked through the market, feeling a great deal older than his eighteen years.

He returned to the cow byre, took off his boots, and slept until he woke, when the sun was high in the sky.

On the following day the market finished, although Dunstan did not return to it, and the foreigners left the village and life in Wall returned to normal, which was perhaps slightly less normal than life in most villages (particularly when the wind was in the wrong direction) but was, all things considered, normal enough.

Two weeks after the market, Tommy Forester proposed marriage to Bridget Comfrey, and she accepted. And the week after that, Mrs. Hempstock came to visit Mrs. Thorn of a morning. They took tea in the parlor.

"It is a blessing about the Forester boy," said Mrs. Hempstock.

"That it is," said Mrs. Thorn. "Have another scone, my dear. I expect your Daisy shall be a bridesmaid."

"I trust she shall," said Mrs. Hempstock, "if she should live so long."

Mrs. Thorn looked up, alarmed. "Why, she is not ill, Mrs. Hempstock? Say it is not so."

"She does not eat, Mrs. Thorn. She wastes away. She drinks a little water from time to time."

"Oh, my!"

Mrs. Hempstock went on,"Last night I finally discovered the cause. It is your Dunstan."

"Dunstan? He has not..." Mrs. Thorn raised one hand to her mouth.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Hempstock, hastily shaking her head and pursing her lips, "nothing like that. He has ignored her. She has not seen him for days and days. She has taken it into her head that he no longer cares for her, and all she does is hold the snowdrop he gave her, and she sobs."

Mrs. Thorn measured out more tea from the jar into the pot, added hot water."Truth to tell," she admitted, "we're a little concerned about Dunstan, Thorney and me. He's been mooning. That's the only word for it. His work isn't getting done. Thorney was saying that he needs some settling down, that boy. If he'd but settle down, why Thorney was saying he'd settle all the Westward Meadows on the lad."

Mrs. Hempstock nodded slowly. "Hempstock would certainly not be averse to seeing our Daisy happy. Certain he'd settle a flock of our sheep on the girl." The Hempstocks' sheep were notoriously the finest for miles around: shaggy-coated and intelligent (for sheep), with curling horns and sharp hooves. Mrs. Hempstock and Mrs. Thorn sipped their tea. And so it was settled.

Dunstan Thorn was married in June to Daisy Hempstock. And if the groom seemed a little distracted, well, the bride was as glowing and lovely as ever any bride has been.

Behind them, their fathers discussed the plans for the farmhouse they would build for the newlyweds in the western meadow. Their mothers agreed how lovely Daisy looked, and what a pity it was that Dunstan had stopped Daisy from wearing the snowdrop he had bought for her at the market at the end of April, in her wedding dress.

And it is there we will leave them, in a falling flurry of rose petals, scarlet and yellow and pink and white.

Or almost.

They lived in Dunstan's cottage, while their little farmhouse was erected, and they were certainly happy enough; and the day-to-day business of raising sheep, and herding sheep, and shearing them, and nursing them, slowly took the faraway look from Dunstan's eyes.