Stardust

That morning, Brevis’s mother had placed a single radish upon the table in front of him and had said, “Brevis, son. This radish was all I was able to pull from the ground today. All our crops have failed, and all our food has gone. We’ve nothing to sell but the billy goat. So I want you to halter the goat, and take him to the market, and sell him to a farmer. And with the coins you get for the goat—and you’ll take nothing less than a florin, mark you—buy a hen, and buy corn, and turnips; and perhaps we shall not starve.”

So Brevis had chewed his radish, which was woody, and peppery to the tongue, and spent the rest of the morning chasing the goat about its pen, sustaining a bruise to the rib and a stare bite to the thigh in the process, and, eventually, and with the help of a passing tinker, he had subdued the goat enough to have it haltered, and, leaving his mother to bandage the tinker’s goat-inflicted injuries, he dragged the billy goat toward the market.

Sometimes the goat would take it into his head to charge on ahead, and Brevis would be dragged behind him, the heels of his boots grinding into the dried mud of the roadway, until the goat would decide—suddenly and without warning, for no reason Brevis was able to discern—to stop. Then Brevis would pick himself up and return to dragging the beast.

He reached the crossroads on the edge of the wood, sweaty and hungry and bruised, pulling an uncooperative goat. There was a tall woman standing at the crossroads. A circlet of silver sat in the crimson headpiece that surrounded her dark hair, and her dress was as scarlet as her lips.

“What do they call you, boy?” she asked, in a voice like musky brown honey.

“They call me Brevis, ma’am,” said Brevis, observing something strange behind the woman. It was a small cart, but there was nothing harnessed between the shafts. He wondered how it had ever got there.

“Brevis,” she purred. “Such a nice name. Would you like to sell me your goat, Brevis-boy?”

Brevis hesitated. “My mother told me I was to take the goat to the market,” he said, “and to sell him for a hen, and some corn, and some turnips, and to bring her home the change.”

“How much did your mother tell you to take for the goat?” asked the woman in the scarlet kirtle.

“Nothing less than a florin,” he said.

She smiled, and held up one hand. Something glinted yellow. “Why, I will give you this golden guinea,” she said, “enough to buy a coopful of hens and a hundred bushels of turnips.”

The boy’s mouth hung open.

“Do we have a deal?”

The boy nodded, and thrust out the hand which held the billy goat’s rope halter. “Here,” was all he could say, visions of limitless wealth and turnips beyond counting tumbling through his head.

The lady took the rope. Then she touched one finger to the goat’s forehead, between its yellow eyes, and let go of the rope.

Brevis expected the billy goat to bolt for the woods or down one of the roads, but it stayed where it was, as if frozen into position. Brevis held out his hand for the golden guinea.

The woman looked at him then, examining him from the soles of his muddy feet, to his sweaty, cropped hair, and once more she smiled.

“You know,” she said, “I think that a matched pair would be so much more impressive than just one. Don’t you?”

Brevis did not know what she was talking about, and opened his mouth to tell her so. But just then she reached out one long finger, and touched the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, and he found he could not say anything at all.

She snapped her fingers, and Brevis and the billy goat hastened to stand between the shafts of her cart; and Brevis was surprised to notice that he was walking on four legs, and he seemed to be no taller than the animal beside him.

The witch-woman cracked her whip, and her cart jolted off down the muddy road, drawn by a matched pair of horned white billy goats.

The little hairy man had taken Tristran’s ripped coat and trousers and waistcoat, and, leaving him covered by a blanket, had walked into the village which nestled in the valley between three heather-covered hills.

Tristran sat under the blanket, in the warm evening, and waited.

Lights flickered in the hawthorn bush behind him. He thought they were glow-worms or fireflies, but, on closer inspection, he perceived they were tiny people, flickering and flitting from branch to branch.

He coughed, politely. A score of tiny eyes stared down at him. Several of the little creatures vanished. Others retreated high into the hawthorn bush, while a handful, braver than the others, flitted toward him.

They began to laugh, in high, bell-tinkling tones, pointing at Tristran, in his broken boots and blanket, and underclothes, and bowler hat. Tristran blushed red, and pulled the blanket about himself.

One of the little folk sang:

Hankety pankety
Boy in a blanket, he’s
Off on a goose-chase to
Look for a star