Stardust

“My sisters will be harsh, but cruel,” said the old witch-queen. “However, I appreciate the sentiment. You have a good heart, child. A pity it will not be mine.”

The star leaned down, then, and kissed the old woman on her wizened cheek, feeling the rough hairs on it scrape her soft lips.

Then the star and her true love walked away, toward the wall. “Who was the old biddy?” asked Tristran. “She seemed a bit familiar. Was anything wrong?”

“Nothing was wrong,” she told him. “She was just someone I knew from the road.”

Behind them were the lights of the market, the lanterns and candles and witch-lights and fairy glitter, like a dream of the night sky brought down to earth. In front of them, across the meadow, on the other side of the gap in the wall, now guardless, was the town of Wall. Oil lamps and gas lamps and candles glowed in the windows of the houses of the village. To Tristran, then, they seemed as distant and unknowable as the world of the Arabian Nights.

He looked upon the lights of Wall for what he knew (it came to him then with certainty) was the last time. He stared at them for some time and said nothing, the fallen star by his side. And then he turned away, and together they began to walk toward the East.

Epilogue in Which Several Engings May Be Discerned

It was considered by many to be one of the greatest days in the history of the Stormhold, the day that Lady Una, long lost and believed to be dead (having been stolen, as an infant, by a witch), returned to the mountain land. There were celebrations and fireworks and rejoicings (official and otherwise) for weeks after her palanquin arrived in a procession led by three elephants.

The joy of the inhabitants of Stormhold and all its dominions was raised to levels hitherto unparalleled when the Lady

Una announced that, in her time away, she had given birth to a son, who, in the absence and presumed death of the last two of her brothers, was the next heir to the throne. Indeed, she told them, he already wore the Power of Stormhold about his neck.

He and his new bride would come to them soon, though the Lady Una could be no more specific about the date of their arrival than this, and it appeared to irk her. In the meantime, and in their absence, the Lady Una announced that she would rule the Stormhold as regent. Which she did, and did well, and the dominions on and about Mount Huon prospered and flourished under her command.

It was three more years before two travel-stained wanderers arrived, dusty and footsore, in the town of Cloudsrange, in the lower reaches of the Stormhold proper, and they took a room in an inn, and sent for hot water and a tin bath. They stayed at the inn for several days, conversing with the other customers and guests. On the last night of their stay, the woman, whose hair was so fair it was almost white, and who walked with a limp, looked at the man, and said, “Well?”

“Well,” he said. “Mother certainly seems to be doing an excellent job of reigning.”

“Just as you,” she told him, tartly, “would do every bit as well, if you took the throne.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “And it certainly seems like it would be a nice place to end up, eventually. But there are so many places we have not yet seen. So many people still to meet. Not to mention all the wrongs to right, villains to vanquish, sights to see, all that. You know.”

She smiled, wryly. “Well,” she said, “At least we shall not be bored. But we had better leave your mother a note.”

And so it was that the Lady Una of Stormhold was brought a sheet of paper by an innkeeper’s lad. The sheet was sealed with sealing wax, and the Lady Una questioned the boy closely about the travelers—a man and his wife—before she broke the seal and read the letter. It was addressed to her, and after the salutations, it read:

Have been unavoidably detained by the world.

Expect us when you see us.

It was signed by Tristran, and beside his signature was a fingerprint, which glittered and glimmered and shone when the shadows touched it as if it had been dusted with tiny stars.

With which, there being nothing else that she could do about it, Una had to content herself.

It was another five years after that before the two travelers finally returned for good to the mountain fastness. They were dusty and tired and dressed in rags and tatters, and were at first, and to the shame of the entire land, treated as vagabonds and rogues; it was not until the man displayed the topaz stone that hung about his neck that he was recognized as the Lady Una’s only son.